film | Lost in Japanese-to-English translation

At least Takashi Shimizu believes in what he does. To date, the director has helmed four Grudge horror movies — two theatrical releases (a third is on the way, of course) and two straight-to-video titles — in his native Japan, the 2004 American version of his original Grudge, and now THE GRUDGE 2, its follow-up, which nobody really asked for, save for maybe Takashi Shimizu. Had it not already been nabbed by another scary Japanese export, you might think The Ring would be a better name for this brand ... until you remember that the Ring property lays claim to a series of novels and comic books, a TV-movie, and a film trilogy in Japan alone, plus two Hollywood remakes, which, I think, certainly earns it the right to be called The Ring. Well, either that or The Neverending Story, which is a title ironically taken by a stalled 1984-1994 kiddie-fantasy franchise, but I digress, mostly because I'm trying very hard to avoid writing my review of The Grudge 2.

And here's why: there's only so many ways one can expound upon its stilted blandness. It's not unwatchable, not embarrassingly incompetent, not even full-tilt terrible — just bursting at the seams with the same clichéd genre formality U.S. audiences have seen over and over since that evil little girl with the swampy 'do crawled through the television set and into our hearts at the nifty twist conclusion of The Ring: demonic child phantoms, spooky occurrences in/around the bathtub, herky-jerky body contortions worthy of a macabre Cirque du Soleil performance, some sort of curse stemming from a tormented past, ominous noises that sound like a malfunctioning Speak N Spell, and locks of long black hair creeping out of places where no locks of long black hair should be found (i.e., your throat, the attic dumbwaiter). Let's compare The Grudge 2 to the post-Ring J-horror adaptations that contain those tired ingredients: It's not as lame as The Ring Two or Pulse, it's on par with the negligible Dark Water, and it's actually a bit of an improvement from the first Grudge, which was a ghost tale so silly that the poor ghost had to get buzzed into an apartment building in order to kill a tenant who pissed it off. Oh sure. You're powerful enough to make your victims disappear by pulling them inside a mirror or their own sweatshirt, but passing through a wall? That's clearly pushing it.

Sarah Michelle Gellar, the ineffectual heroine from Grudge 1, returns, but she only sticks around for a 10-minute appearance that carbon copies Jamie Lee Curtis' I'm-outta-here-before-they-write-more-sequels rooftop plunge from the dreadful Halloween: Resurrection. Saddled with leading-lady duties in this new Grudge is Joan of Arcadia's Amber Tamblyn as Gellar's estranged (for no apparent reason) sis, and fans of the sidetrack in opening paragraph of this critique will note that Tamblyn's big-screen debut was as the dead chick who resembled a moldy eggplant in The Ring. If i dug corny puns, I'd observe that her career has come semi-circle.

Anyway, Tamblyn arrives in japan to assist gellar, who's medicated and strapped to a hospital bed after the events of Grudge 1, and traces her sibling's troubles to the haunted house where she worked as a personal nurse. Bad stuff ensues as The Grudge 2 weaves this storyline with a few others: Nasty spirits from the home's violent history also terrorize a lonely teen (Arielle Kebbel) at Tokyo International School and — oh, why not? — a family of four in downtown Chicago. (Jennifer Beals plays the stepmom.) Though Stephen Susco's script falls back on lazy plotting ("I have a friend who's really into folklore — I think he can help us") and nonsensical jolts (what's with the milk-regurgitating next-door neighbor, or the nice guidance counselor who suddenly becomes a sinister harbinger of doom before vanishing from the film altogether?), he connects the dots with a slick mind- and time-bending twist that I sure didn't anticipate. Briefly, you'll get a solid glimpse of how tricky-fun the Grudge flicks could've been with a sneakier, more ambitious overhaul. Instead, The Grudge 2 merely winds up the umpteenth nail in the coffin of yankee-ized J-horror. C