Recent viewings

The Grudge (2004). A stylish but vacuous horror thriller.

The intro to the film tells us, in typically portentous horror-movie style, the "when someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage... a curse is born. The curse gathers in that place of death. Those who encounter it will be consumed by its fury." Apparently this means that anyone who subsequently comes in contact with the site of the death is doomed to a horrible death at the hands of gray-skinned revenants with 80s-style raccoon-eyes mascara who follow the unfortunate visitor around, materializing and dematerializing at will.

The film does not explain, precisely, why one specific house in Tokyo is afflicted with such revenants as a result of one specific violent death, while the trailer parks of rural slums, the crack-ridden housing projects of the inner city, and other violence-ridden locales remain free of spooky gray-skinned ghosts with raccoon mascara.

Sarah Michelle Gellar is attractive as always, but appears curiously expressionless in her role as the visiting American nurse who is bedevilled by the creepy revenants. This flat affect was highly effective in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, where it served alternately as comical irony, in the show's lighter moments, or an indication of her character's growing alienation from the world around her in the later and more "angsty" episodes. It doesn't work so well in a genre which, by definition, is intended to portray terrifying events and provoke a similar, sympathetic emotional response in the viewer.

The director's repertoire of special effects and suspense-building techniques, plus a few genuinely startling visual images, make for some effective jump-inducing moments. But on the whole The Grudge doesn't inspire me to go see its sequel.