The Grudge
March 1st, 2008
I finally saw The Grudge a few days ago. I was initially excited to watch it, but…I ended up pausing it numerous times to go blow my nose (I was sick, so maybe that contributed to my irritation towards the movie), do laundry, wash some dishes, and even check e-mail. It was that slow and…nonsensical.
Usually, horror movies can really get me into them, whether through their story or their visuals. This did neither for several reasons:
- There were no characters I could really latch on to to either love or hate. The American girl seemed clueless, the ghosts themselves didn’t make much sense, and I couldn’t bring myself to completely hate the father who killed his family in the first place (I’ll explain this later – don’t think I support murder in any way, shape, or form).
- The visuals were not that stunning. Granted, they were pretty original, but a lot of my jumps came from the music, not the sights. Okay, the mother parting her hair and opening her eyes to the camera was pretty creepy, but she also looked more like an animated character than a real human being, thus lessening the “scare” factor for me. Maybe I’m becoming desensitized. Although, I’ll admit, the meowing boy was pretty eerie at first.
- The story itself did not make much sense, and that is my biggest grudge against this movie (haha – I’m so funny…no, not really).
I couldn’t pinpoint who had a grudge. From one side, everyone in the movie could have had a grudge. From the other side, no one could have justifiably had a grudge, except for maybe the father and the son.
- The father found out his wife didn’t really love him and was stalking another man – that’s pretty harsh.
- The son was a bystander in all the events and was killed in a terrible manner. If anyone justifiably had a grudge in this movie and could have reasonably gone on a ghost killing-spree, this kid was it. Instead, he meows at people. *shakes head*
It is the mother who kills the most people, and I can’t completely understand why. Yes, she was murdered by an enraged husband, and no one should ever be murdered. But, in another sense, she’s not an innocent person in the whole thing. So why is she the one portrayed as holding a grudge? The whole movie’s premise is that a place can be cursed if someone dies there in extreme anger or sorrow, so why isn’t the husband the one doing the haunting, killing, etc? Or the son?
Oh well. A film critic from Rotten Tomatoes summed it up best when they said, “There’s some creepy imagery to be found, but not much in the way of logic or truly jarring scares.”
Better luck next time,
-CT