The Grudge (2020)

JANUARY 2, 2020

GENRE: SUPERNATURAL
SOURCE: THEATRICAL (REGULAR SCREENING)

I hate when I feel I have to defend a movie I myself was mixed on, but that's the problem with modern movie discussion - too many people on Twitter and Letterboxd seem to think that Siskel & Ebert's thumbs up or down (or Rotten Tomatoes' splat/fresh) are the only options. The Grudge (2020), like most movies, actually ends up somewhere in the middle of the equation, in that... it's fine. It's competently made, well cast (and in turn, acted), has a solid score from the Newton Brothers, a couple of decent scares, and - best of all - doesn't require you to remember the storylines of the previous films, even though it's technically "Grudge 4" than the remake the title suggests (hey, it worked for Halloween '18!). And yet I see it getting half stars on Letterboxd - shouldn't that be reserved for the worst movies of all time?

It's not unlike what happened with last month's Black Christmas, another "OK" movie that made me wish I liked it more than I did if only to fully balance all the negativity being thrown at it. But you can't defend something without it looking like you actually love it, so there's really no winning here - I can just hope that there are others like me who feel that while this is certainly no must-see horror film, it is at least worthy of an A-List reservation (or whatever other Moviepass-like options still exist) or, in a few months, Redbox rental. I should stress that I am no big fan of the other films; I've seen I think eight of the previous entries between the US Grudge films and the Ju-Ons from Japan, and I can't say I'd ever be too interested in watching them again unless I had to for research. I didn't DISLIKE any of them, either - it just never grabbed my "fan" interest the way other franchises have - one and done is enough, and I don't make much effort to track down the Ju-On entries I've missed (such as Kayako vs Sadako, in which the series' villains faced off against the one from the Japanese Ring films).

But like I said, thankfully this one didn't require you to remember much of them, either - though it's amusing to see how many alleged critics think it's a remake when the movie literally starts by explaining how it's in-continuity with the other films. After a million production logos, we start in 2004, as an American social worker named Fiona Landers leaves the familiar house from the other films, talking to a coworker about how "Yoko would have to take over". If you know your series' history (or, like me, refreshed with the Wiki entries while waiting for the film to start), you'd know that Yoko is the original social worker in the 2004 film who was succeeded by Sarah Michelle Gellar's character. Either way, that's pretty much it for how it connects to the others, and that's all we see of Tokyo - after a quick trash bag scare homaging one of the Japanese entries, Fiona returns home to Pennsylvania, and that's where we stay for the rest of the film.

The only other connection of note is that it once again has the criss-crossed timelines, something that they had thankfully done away with for Grudge 3 (the direct to video entry that, for my money, was the best of the three) which I hoped would be continued here, but alas. As always I fail to see the real point of doing this - there are never any major payoffs for the structure and it mostly just tells us that certain characters will be dead before we've even met them. The main character, I guess, is Andrea Riseborough's Muldoon, a detective in 2006 who moves to the town and finds a body with her new partner (Demian Bichir) on her first day. The victim was last seen at a particular house on Breyburn Road, information that spooks Bichir's Goodman out but he won't explain why. So she starts digging, and it turns out the Breyburn house belonged to Fiona, and that her and her family ended up dead shortly after she returned there in 2004.

From this investigation Muldoon also learns of the Spencers, a married pair of realtors who were responsible for selling the house for the Landers in 2005, and the Mathesons, an elderly couple who ended up buying it. And of course since Muldoon herself entered (Bichir's character never did, so he's safe) she is a target now as well, so the movie basically cuts back and forth between the 2004/2005 stuff that ultimately will end tragically for just about everyone involved, and Muldoon in the "present" trying to piece it all together and hopefully not end up as a victim herself. I'm not particularly sure why any of her scenes needed to occur in 2006; tying it to the 2004 events makes sense but everything she uncovers is treated as "the past" and could have just as easily have been 15 years ago instead of a year or two ago, sparing them the need for period details like phones and TVs. Maybe they just didn't want to deal with putting Bichir in makeup, since he's the only one that appears in all three timelines?

Speaking of Bichir, his last spooky movie was The Nun where he was saddled with two younger folks, i.e. playing the standard paycheck-cashing esteemed actor that nearly every younger-aiming horror movie needs to have. But here, apart from Riseborough's son, who disappears for an hour anyway*, the youngest cast member is Betty Gilpin (as one of the realtors) at 34. Riseborough's a bit older than her, and everyone else is at least in their 40s, with some in their 70s (Lin Shaye and Frankie Faison as the Mathesons) - there isn't a single teen or even college aged type in sight. It's a risky gamble on Sony and Ghosthouse's part to populate their revival with older character actors that people like me (turning 40 soon) will appreciate - Shaye, Faison, William Sadler, Jacki Weaver - instead of whoever is on the CW these days.

One that hasn't apparently paid off, since most of the chatter I've seen seems to be that people are bored by it and don't care about these people. The film thankfully doesn't seem to be in any rush to get to jump scares, focusing instead on these desperate, everyday folks who want to make sense of what's happening to them and protect their loved ones as opposed to BOO! moments. The Matheson subplot in particular is kind of devastating; Shaye's character is seemingly in the late stages of dementia or Alzheimers (if they specify, I didn't catch it) and her husband (Faison) is so hellbent on letting her be at peace that he has sought the services of an assisted suicide guru (Weaver) as he sees it as the only option. Knowing her symptoms are more due to the haunting stuff as opposed to a disease he wants to help cure her of is heartbreaking, and Faison nails the struggle. Meanwhile, the Spencers have recently learned that their unborn child will be born with Adrenoleukodystrophy (which I had to look up; the movie just says "ALD" and never explains why they're so upset about it, assuming we'd already know I guess), so they definitely don't have time or patience to be dealing with any angry ghosts as they're unsure if they're able to be fitting parents for a child that will require so much extra care.

Riseborough is also dealing with her own tragedy; her husband died of cancer a few months earlier, and apparently their 6-ish son was the one who found him dead. The first time we see these people the kid is nearly in tears because he found a Lego set that him and his daddy were building together and never finished (which is pretty much the easiest way in the world to get me hooked into a "DO NOT LET ANYTHING ELSE SAD HAPPEN TO THIS CHILD" kind of mood), and the script allows her to have a few private breakdown moments as well. In other words, the script by director Nicolas Pesce (rewriting Jeff Buhler's draft enough to get sole screenplay credit, with Buhler settling for "story by") puts more effort into making these characters well rounded as opposed to walking exposition machines that are required to be around for one of the ghosts to startle or kill.

But as longtime readers know, I never care about those things anyway; I was mostly enjoying their drama unfold through the familiar beats of a Grudge movie. Some of the scares are pretty well done (there's one involving Sadler that got me good) and the gore is more for disturbing effect (such as someone chopping off their own fingers) than of the crowd-pleasing variety like in a slasher. The problem is, as always, there's no real defeating the curse, and again we're told of nearly everyone's fate before we've even met them, so apart from Riseborough and her son (and Bichir, who bafflingly disappears for the last reel anyway) there's not a lot of suspense for the characters, so I get why it's not working for people. It definitely does not succeed as a "scary movie" in the traditional way for long stretches, as the focus is on character development and more adult-leaning situations than anyone should reasonably expect when they see that Screen Gems logo at the beginning.

So since it doesn't really involve any of the previous characters or storylines, if you're a big Grudge fan you will probably find little interest in this revival. But if you enjoy slower paced supernatural fare (The Pact came to mind more than once, as did Oculus) I hope you'll see it my way, that it's an interesting attempt at shoehorning something a little more adult-oriented into a familiar IP. The results aren't always successful, but I'd rather something a little more ambitious like this than something like The Nun (or 2017's Rings update) that is running on fumes and franchise goodwill and nothing else.

What say you?

*There's a scene like an hour into the movie where Riseborough brings her son to work because the sitter canceled, and I swear it had to be moved around in the timeline. Not only is this the first time we have heard of a sitter (something I had been wondering about since she's an only parent who is seemingly always working) but she goes to the office to get information it seemed she already had from a previous scene. I suspect with the back and forth timelines the scene didn't quite fit where it was originally meant to go and it got moved here just to clarify the sitter situation (allowing us to assume that this unseen sitter must practically live there) and also remind us that the kid even exists before he takes on a more active role a few scenes later.

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