You’ll hold a Grudge against rough remake
Horror remakes get a bad name – often justifiably so.
Not many genre entries enter second reboot territory, though, and those that do get greeted with loud alarm bells.
In the case of The Grudge, it already had a perfectly acceptable American adaptation of the superior Japanese original back in 2004.
That remake was followed by two dire sequels which would make you think this is one movie universe unworthy of a return trip.
Alas, writer-director Nicolas Pesce resurrects the vengeful ghost that dooms anyone who enters a cursed house.
The finest remakes take the best elements of the original and add their own spin or fresh ideas.
The Grudge 2020 instead chooses to tread the same path as its predecessors – and include familiar tropes and trends you’ll find in hundreds of other horror flicks.
Pesce was the brains behind 2018’s Piercing – a film I didn’t like as much as many critics but was undoubtedly bursting with creativity and otherworldliness.
Conversely, this is paintby- numbers filmmaking and incredibly lacking in effective scares.
Andrea Riseborough’s
Detective Muldoon often looks like she’s about to fall asleep – and I can understand why!
After his outstanding work in Searching, this feels beneath John Cho and Demián Bichir should be having serious words with his agent after his unenviable onetwo of The Nun and this misfire.
Earning The Grudge an extra star, though, is the ever-reliable presence of horror queen Lin Shaye.
She’s rescued a few of the Insidious movies and her terminally ill gran is an unsettlingyet-sympathetic presence.
Gore hounds will be satisfied too as the blood – and nasty looking water – flows.
Sadly it’s slim pickings for positives as The Grudge 2020 will leave audiences feeling like they’ve been cursed.