The Grudge 2 DVD Review: Bloodless horror does the trick.

February 9th, 2007 in Actors, Dvd, Movies, Reviews, horror

I thought only clowns could make white makeup scary.

Haunting take on a whole new meaning when the Japanese film industry grabs a hold of a good story. They gave us horror classics like Odishon (Audition), the Ringu series (The Rings 1 & 2 so far) and the Ju-On (The Grudge) saga. When Hollywood started running out of ways to kill teenagers, they began looking across the Pacific for box office gold in the horror department. After a few successes found in The Grudge and The Ring, we started getting bombs like the boring Dark Water and the sleeper Pulse. In late 2006, we received another American regurgitation of Japanese horror in The Grudge 2.

After the opening scene scare, The Grudge 2 begins with Aubrey Davis (Amber Tamblyn), sister of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character Karen from the first installment. Their mother discovers Karen is being kept at a Japanese hospital (where we last saw her) and sends Aubrey overseas to bring her home. When a freak ‘accident’ takes place at the hospital, Aubrey becomes determined to find out exactly what made her sister go insane. While this plot unravels, Allison (Arielle Kebbel) has a story of her own. A harmless test of courage turns disastrous when Allison is pressured into entering a local abandoned house that is known for being haunted. Her world is turned upside down when she is thereon visited by a small Japanese boy who disappears and reappears without warning. For the rest of the film both (but separately) Allison and Aubrey desperately want to find out just what the hell is going on.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer effectively carried the first installment, but the sequel relies on new blood for success. Amber Tamblyn from Joan Of Arcadia TV fame and Arielle Kebbel from John Tucker Must Die try their hand at the horror genre and do fairly well. Kebbel, the more tormented of the two characters, conveys a look of terror that rivals that of Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween. My heartbeat literally sped up and slowed down according to hers. Tamblyn gave off more of a confused-type fear rather than sheer horror, which in turn slowed down the movie some, at some points boring me. She did a lot better in her bit part in The Ring than her role in The Grudge 2, but it was still enough to keep some of the suspense from Kebbel’s storyline going strong.

The Grudge 2 is pretty much on par with the first, which I liked, but it’s nothing special.  Looking back on it, it really shouldn’t have been that scary.  Just as part one, there just a lot of scary faces and dark shadows.  You don’t see anyone actually die and there isn’t any blood that is related to any of the deaths either.  However, if I were to pop in the DVD again and attempt an encore presentation, I’ll have to make sure the doors are locked and the cell phone is charged.

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