Well, it made 40 million, so they did something right.
Saw it tonight. Enjoyed it, definitely. I’ve seen the Japanese originals (Ju-On: The Curse, Ju-On: The Curse 2, Ju-On: The Grudge, and Ju-On: The Grudge 2), so I can’t say how easy it was/wasn’t to understand the overall storyline, given the non-linear approach – however, I think it was easier than the originals.
Overall, it was kind of a remix of sorts of some of the best bits from the Japanese films; the effect was kind of like going to see a band you really like play live – the songs are in different order, many of 'em have different arrangements, but they’re still the same tunes. And it’s still good.
On the whole, I’d rank 'em thus: The Curse 1/2, The Grudge (US), The Grudge 1/2 (Jap) – in particular, I was really disappointed with the fourth Japanese film. If you decide to look up the originals, be aware that the first half-hour or so of The Curse 2 is almost straight recap from 1 (although edited a bit tighter). And The Grudge draws heavily from The Curse. The Curse definitely had some more disturbing bits than the others, and the ending (I thought) was WAY cool.
Audience reaction seemed uniformly strong – lots of nervous laughter/chatter at appropriate points (namely, immediately after the freakier moments).
Definitely not a movie to go see if you’re into the splatter/hack/slash type movies – it’s all about atmosphere, spookiness, tension, and creepy imagery. Great scary mood movie.
The wife was very, very jumpy throughout, and very much enjoyed it – there were several bury-her-face-against-my-shoulder moments. She’s still up as I type this (at 1am), waiting for me to go to bed, if that says anything :)
My girlfriend actually said that sleeping with me and being under the covers was no comfort.
That’s what really made this movie great. It takes all of these typical safe zones that protect the protagonists in western horror flicks and totally invades them. Safety in numbers, protection by light, hiding under your covers and covering your head under a pillow to make the boogeymen go away - forget it. All of these horror DMZ’s are shown to actually make you more susceptable in The Grudge because the curse takes full advantage of your feeling of security.
I myself was laying in bed last night with a feeling of resignation as I thought, “I’m not even gonna bother covering up. If the boogeyman wants to take a bite out of me, I wont spoil his meal with sheets and blankets. I may as well go out with a five star rating.” :)
So is it pretty widely accepted (outside of what critics are saying) that this is a good movie? The girlfriend and I were really excited to see it until we read the reviews… now I need some good word-of-mouth to get me back into it.
Ditto. I ckecked the Yahoo reviews and they seemed relatively positive averaging a B. I think the critics reviews they averaged still equaled a B-. I guess the moral is, be careful which damn internet loonies you listen to before making a decision.
Well, I thought it was really good, my wife loved it, was talking with one of the guys at the office today who saw it over the weekend, and it scared the crap out of every single person he saw it with in the hiding-behind-their-coats kind of way.
It’s a little different, but it’s very, very good. If in doubt, go see a matinee.
Maybe I didn’t see the same movie that you guys saw. I thought it was pretty bad. It overused some of the same elements, and certain things that were supposed to look creepy looked kind of silly, almost laughable, at times. I liked the non-linear storytelling, but found the actual story rather uninteresting.
I thought it was a terrible movie. One genuinely scary moment repeated, and repeated, and repeated, until it becomes so predictable, it’s no longer scary … this is the horror movie that consists of the unbelievable scene where the person goes into the dark attic (even though that’s the stupidest thing to do) every 10 minutes. And Merakon is right, the story is dull -and- doesn’t really hold up. The only way they could make it seem mysterious was to fuck around with the timeline for no good reason.
I caught a lot of laughter in the theater I was in too… but it stopped being nervous about halfway through. Then people were just laughing.
I saw it last night. It wasn’t bad at all. Comparing it to Saw, both had their strengths.
I was happy to see both. The Grudge was creepier while Saw had more shock value.
Some interesting previews, “Hide and Seek” was the best of them. “If you wanna know the secret, you gotta play the game.”
The one thing that I’m having some trouble understanding it how the “curse” worked.
(possible vague spoiling)
Reading the first post:
From IMDB: Plot Outline: An American nurse living and working in Tokyo is exposed to a mysterious supernatural curse, one that locks a person in a powerful rage before claiming their life and spreading to another victim
Well, that doesn’t jive right with what I saw in the movies last night. I saw something that was more of a Curse of the Mummy than a curse chain.
There was really only one instance where the “chain” happened (Yoko to Alex). The rest just seemed to be something more inline with a “sick building syndrome”.
Also, the opening credits indicate that the death has to occur a certain way. Not sure that applied to the person doing most of the “work”.
I didn’t like it. A kid, a cat, and a bunch of hair attacking people didn’t really creep me out at all… And I loved The Ring so I was looking forward to this one. I think the best part about the ring was the video tape itself; that’s what put me front and center into the Creepy Zone. This didn’t have anything like that although the best points were spoiler the dead couple in the attic you couldn’t really see and the girl with no jaw. Other then that: meh.
Well, I loved it. I thought it had a lot of atmosphere and creepiness. My wife must have screamed 7 times in the theatre.
SPOILERS AHEAD!!!
One thing I didn’t understand, though: Why did Bill Pullman kill himself?
As Ebert suggested, the look on his face right before he went over the side was that of a man who’d signed on to do this movie, went all the way to Japan, and then read the script.
I am guessing he killed himself because of what he saw. The old mother was in the same state, essentially, but she probably just lacked the means.
I didn’t hate the movie, but I didn’t love it. I suppose like would be too strong a word. Here is my review, copied from my blog.
I saw The Grudge.
I am a big fan of japanese horror in general, and Ju-On is a great movie, so when I heard about this movie, I was pretty excited. The Ring translated beautifully to an American style movie, and Ju-On had a lot of similarities so I thought it would too.
Now, it wasn’t a BAD movie, but it also wasn’t a very good one.
First, the good:
Trailer for The Ring 2. Made me a little excited. It looks excellent.
Pacing was better, way better.
Acting was better, but that may be my own bias. I thought it was all good, and rather convincing. Horror movies seem to bring out the worst in actors, seriously. They all go dead pan or hysterical, without much in between. Slowly creeping into horror is great, and the entire cast did it pretty well.
The storytelling was easier to keep track of. I had to watch Ju-On several times to understand what was happening to whom. I grasped everything in The Grudge easily, even though a lot of relationships were changed and a few of the encounters happened to different people.
The final exposition was done really, really well. A lot of quick cuts done in succession with a shaky static riddled camera. But, it was effective. The whole scene leading up to it with Sarah Michelle Gellar following Bill whathisface around the house was fantastic. It showed us the time warping that Ju-On had without being RETARDED AND CONFUSING.
Now, The Bad:
Blatant Ringu rip-offs that were entirely unnecessary. My guess is that the director, the same guy that did all the Ju-Ons, looked at the success of The Ring in the US and decided to bring in many elements of it. For instance, the surveillance camera had a blatant Sadoko/Samara rip-off walk. The eye at the very end was the culmination of Ringu. The look of the spirits a few times was more Ringu-style than Ju-On style. They didn’t copy the colour bleeding that I can see, but I suppose that would have been too obvious.
They got a lot of the scenes wrong. They changed the narrative TOO much, when they could have taken the best from all 4 Ju-Ons and just redid it all with English speakers. Maybe the director is tired of making this film?
The evil ghosts were too ephemeral looking and warped. Part of Ju-Ons scariness was that everything looked like a really pale, but otherwise normal person with an awful expression. It gave everything a sense of an awful, real situation… rather than Generic Ghost Story #43981.
The sountrack was inconsistent. Some of it was done well… that is, not at all. There was empty, quiet hopelessness. In some scenes, there was annoying (even though it was quiet) music going. American film makers need to learn that scores are supposed to enhance a scene, not frame it. Cue the scary music when something scary is happening is tried and cliche.
Overall, this movie bored me and annoyed me. I wanted a faithful Americanized Ju-On, and got instead a plagiarized American Ringu/Ju-On hybrid that couldn’t decide which to emulate more.
That being said, I will be buying the DVD and slowly watching all of them together to see exactly where the variations occur, and maybe figuring out why.
“I’ve spent 200 hours playing this game, and believe me when I tell you, it sucks!” :wink:
Rise from your grave!
I rented this piece of shit last night, based on the dimly remembered recommendations of the people in this thread. You people owe me money.
This thing was not even close to scary, and in fact it was annoying in classic horror movie ways. Ie - what the hell are you doing going into the attic with just a lighter? There’s some creepy thing coming at you slowly with its head right by your foot… Maybe try kicking it, Mr We-Couldn’t-Afford-Ashton-Kutcher. Shooting it, Mr Dumbass Detective?
Perhaps it’s the Japanese ethos as according to horror, I dunno, but I much prefer my horror movie people not to be utter twits.
And I thought it was really interesting that the kid and/or mom ate the one guys cell phone and then kept pranking the surviving sister.
Anyway, my final thought/rant:
This movie would have been so much more interesting if she had just broken down and called Giles to help.
Yeah, Faith would’ve totally kicked some monster ass.
Rented this a couple weeks back. While I didn’t react strongly enough to it to perform any thread necromancy myself, I was so underwhelmed that I could only deduce the presence of the alleged whelm by subtle tidal effects.
House. Ghost. Die. House. Ghsot. Die. House. Ghost. Die. And so on–it had about as much tension involved as a film about a dude walking up to people who all happened to, say, be wearing off-brand jeans and then shooting them. The camera, in this theoretical film, would linger ominously on people buying cheap no-brand pants at the store, and then there would be a tracking shot of that person returning home and putting their new jeans on the next day, and then Mr. Jean Therapy would walk up to them from behind, tap them on the shoulder, and shoot them when they turned around with a startled expression.
I’m not even sure experimental results truly confirm the presence of a whelm, it could simply be instrument error.