The Grudge (2004) – A Movie A Day 2021 #49

Cherry blossom season is coming up in about a month, and I’m making tentative plans to doing something during that time for my horror podcast The Last Theater. Thinking about what I want to do has made me want to watch certain Japanese horror movies, but I kind of want to wait until I figure out exactly what I’ll be doing before I dive into what will surely be a J-horror binge. So I did the next best thing to watching a Japanese horror movie and watched an American remake of a Japanese horror movie. Now, you might be thinking that watching an American remake of, well, anything is a bad idea, but there are good J-horror remakes out there. Today’s movie of the day is one of those good remakes, The Grudge (2004).

I did a podcast episode about my distaste for The Grudge (2020) about a year ago, but The Grudge from 2004 is a genuinely good movie, remake or not. First of all, Sarah Michelle Gellar is the star, and that already gives the film a bunch of points. Sam Raimi and Rob Tapert are among the producers of The Grudge (2004), and that adds a few more points. And the smartest thing the filmmakers did was to hire Takashi Shuimizu, the director of Ju-On: The Grudge which The Grudge (2004) is based on and the creator of the entire Ju-On franchise. Rather than hiring an American director to localize the movie for American audiences, Takashi Shimizu was basically allowed to recreate his original movie while trying to improve on things he thought could be better. The Grudge (2004) is basically a do-over for Shimizu. I don’t know if The Grudge (2004) is necessarily better that Ju-On: The Grudge, but it might be. I’ll need to watch the original again to really begin to make that assessment. What I do know is that The Grudge (2004) is a great horror movie that manages to deliver real Japanese horror from the perspective of a foreigner in Japan.

The Grudge (2004) stars Sarah Michelle Gellar as Karen, an American student living in Japan with her American boyfriend Doug. Karen volunteers as a care worker for school credit, and one day she is asked to go care for an elderly woman named Emma when the usual care worker doesn’t show up for work. Karen finds Emma incommunicative and living in filth, and after cleaning her up, Karen also discovers that there is something wrong with the house Emma lives in. Karen and Emma encounter a frightening presence, and from there the movie branches out to tell the stories of multiple people who have come into contact with the presence in the house.

Like most movies in The Grudge/Ju-On franchise, The Grudge (2004) is told in multiple vignettes that move forward and backward in time. Eventually the stories begin to come together and even overlap in a few ways. Karen seems to be the thread that connects everything, though a lot of that just has to do with the fact that Karen is the first character we really get to meet (after a brief, tone-setting intro sequence), and Karen is the last character we follow. Within the story, the connection for everyone is the house itself and its former residents. I know this is all kind of vague, but I don’t want to spoil anything if you’ve never seen any of these movies before. These early Grudge and Ju-On movies are quite good and well worth watching. I haven’t seen many of the later Japanese movies in the franchise, and I think there are two American releases I haven’t seen either, though I’ll be taking care of that very soon.

The Grudge (2004) is a very good and scary haunted house movie that emphasizes tone and tension over cheap scares or, really, even plot. Sometimes the weaving of the different times feels disconcerting, and some of the overlaps make you wonder what is actually happening, but it all comes together well to heighten the creepiness of the movie. There is some blood and gore in The Grudge (2004), but not nearly as much as in The Grudge (2020) which I complained about. The Grudge (2004) is rated PG-13, and it’s a great example of the fact that you don’t need a gory R rating to make a great haunted house movie.

One thing that really struck upon this latest viewing of The Grudge (2004) is the fear associated with being a foreigner in an unfamiliar country. Most of the people we follow in the movie are American, and they each have some degree of apprehension about living in a foreign country where communication can often be difficult. Maybe it’s because I haven’t watched The Grudge (2004) since before I lived in Japan for two years myself, but I totally understand the uneasiness a lot of the characters are feeling. It’s not that they dislike where they are, it’s just that it can be easy to feel isolated and alone even in everyday situations. These fears are made clear in the movie, and I feel like Takashi Shimizu was able to use those normal, understandable fears to heighten the supernatural fears that are a part of the American characters’ adopted country. I might not be explaining this very well because I haven’t taken the time to really iron out the ideas the movie presented to me this time, but I am impressed with how Shimizu was able to integrate those feelings of isolation into his movie. I think it’s something that he couldn’t have done in the same way with his original movie. It’s a great example of adding complexity in a remake rather than diluting it for a different audience.

I want to think more on that. But for now, I think I might move on to The Grudge 2 because I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. I’m also going to start planning out what I want to do for Sakura season, but that’s still a little ways away. Until then, I have a lot more movies to watch.