‘The Grudge’ suffers from a curse that can’t be lifted
As the initiated surely recall, the grudge of “The Grudge” is a curse that arises when someone dies in a rage. The curse torments those who contract it with visions of wet-haired apparitions, disembodied limbs, mute children or whatever else might strike a screenwriter’s fancy.
This free-form curse requires scant logic and never stops, much like the franchise it inhabits. The new “Grudge” — the second remake since the original theatrical movie, “Ju-On: The Grudge,” a Japanese film first shown in 2002 — boasts respectable indie credentials from writer-director
Nicolas Pesce, who displayed a skillful if sophomoric flair for escalating gross-outs in his previous features, “The Eyes of My Mother” and “Piercing.”
Some of that talent is apparent here, particularly in Pesce’s use of sound. (The wittiest moments involve the friendly lapping of a dog and the insistent sputtering of a sprinkler.) Actress Andrea Riseborough also hits some moving notes as a detective raising a son alone after her husband’s death. And there are a few good chills when Jacki Weaver turns up as an assisted-suicide counselor. Because of a nonchronological structure, we encounter Weaver’s character’s corpse before learning how it reached its advanced state of decay.
But Pesce is stuck with certain standbys. This time, John Cho plays the unfortunate shower-taker who realizes mid-shampoo that there is an unfamiliar hand in his hair. And out-of-focus specters who sneak up behind people or disappear and reappear with lightswitch flicks are not the stuff of primal terror. The remake remains cursed by a fatally hokey concept.