It has been hailed as the next Ring, but it comes nowhere close in terms
of horror, plot or credibility. If you put your mind to it, you can probably
just about control your giggles, but scared you will not be.
True, we have the usual 'scary' movie trick of making a big noise combined with
a crashing soundtrack crescendo as we are hit by a cut to a close-up of
something popping out of some alcove or closet, and it's hard not to jump out
of one's seat purely due to reflex, but even that doesn't make this film scary.
The film starts off promising enough, even if my own concentration was a little
thrown by a cry of, "bollocks !", from behind as an unsuspecting audience
member discovered it was subtitled. By the time we got to the end it would
probably have been possible to raise the same shout with a hundred voices in
unison.
Well before we are halfway into the film we have discovered the film's motif,
even if we don't really have a clue what it's all about. Put someone in a house
for whatever reason. Pop-up some whitewashed child. Pad the scene out a bit. Cue
some rustling crisp packets and have whoever is in the house in this particular
scene let out a gagged scream, buckle their legs and slowly slide down a wall
with a look of horror on their face. Cut to next scene. And repeat.
Do it enough times and you'll have plenty in the can to call it a movie. Throw
the shooting order up in the air, assemble-edit to whatever randomness occurs,
and you can create a film that is chronologically challenged, which does give
it an edge of intrigue, even if there is no rhyme or reason to it.
There were a few well delivered scenes in the drivel, and some truly and
unintentionally hilarious moments as well. The schoolgirl bedroom scene is
perhaps the best in the film ( but don't let your imagination run away with
you here ). It is the one time Takashi actually delivers us a scene with some
real and believable emotion from all his characters, but no sooner is he done
with that than we're back to our cast throwing their hands, and whatever they
happen to be holding, into the air, letting out a girlie scream and running
off with their knees tightly together.
I have to admit that it's probably
pretty hard to pull off a 'scared as s--t' shot, and the problem has plagued all
directors since black and white B-movies aimed to shock us to the core.
There are few films I can think of which came anywhere close to being totally
convincing, and they are The Man Who Fell To Earth,
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and John Hurt's classic
'spaghetti horror' in Alien. When presented with endless scenes, all of
which end with a cast member's death, we need to see some diversity as we
herald the demise of each character, some variety is needed but Takashi gives
us none.
The film is, on the whole, bordering on being a comedy, and were it to have been
targeted for western release he may have been well advised to step over that
line. He would almost certainly have produced a far more convincing
horror-comedy than Scary Movie and its ilk ever were.
A fun game to play would be to count the number of times a character makes the
fatal move of the horror genre; don't go in the house, don't go in the
basement, don't go up the stairs, don't open the cupboard, don't stick your
head through the loft hatch, don't look under the table, don't hide under the
bed sheets, don't throw your mobile phone away and rip out the wires to the
landline, and don't bend over in the shower.
It is perhaps the unintentional humour and timeline juxtaposition which keeps
the film firmly in the 'entertaining' category, and there's a certain 'feel
good' factor that comes with a universal agreement of viewers that it was all
rubbish.
Takashi gives us a film which is hard to rate. It was repetitive and
predictable throughout, entirely lacking in any meaningful plot, was a complete
jumble of almost unrelated sequences, and failed to deliver any horror at all.
On the other hand there was enough in there to be entertaining and keep us
watching, and any film which can bring a smile ( intentionally or not ) has to
have something going for it, and choking on one's drink as on-screen antics
collide with consumption has to provide a bonus point. To its great credit,
The Grudge has an outstanding cast, all of whom delivered solid
performances given the constrains within which they were working, although they
are so easy to overlook.
Realising the potential of what the film could have been is perhaps what saves
Takashi's bacon. It was like watching an amateur's first credible effort and
finding that it was remarkably good, even if a little lacking in parts.
It lends itself to criticism in terms of, "if only you'd done this and that",
rather than outright condemnation.
At the end of the day, although you will leave the cinema none the wiser as to
what it was all about, and still be wondering what role the cat played in all
of this, you will most likely have a warm feeling inside.
