The Grudge

So I finally got around to seeing The Grudge, the white-person remake of the Japanese film Ju-On. Apparently, us Americans won't see foreign films, so they have to go and remake them with English-speaking caucasians in order to get this market to see them. Sigh.

Anyway, I'm glad they did, because The Grudge is a solidly-delivered horror movie that gets under your skin. Granted, I'm a sucker for a good haunted house flick, but with fantastically creepy makeup effects for the ghosts, nonlinear time that keeps you off balance, and well-tensioned attack scenes, director Takashi Simizu has established himself as a talented architect of fear. He'll have a chance to solidify that reputation, as there are more Grudges on the way.

And perhaps remaking this movie for American audiences wasn't such a stupid thing after all. In this case. There's something to be said for localizing a horror flick such as this one, because different things scare the Japanese than do Westerners - different views how the universe works drive different reactions to supernatural-based horror. (For example, The Exorcist is unlikely to scare an Atheist as much as it would a fundamentalist Christian.) And Shimizu puts the localization to good effect by playing up the fish-out-of-water feeling you can get when being immersed in a different culture. So, while it's a shame that they had to go to such lengths to bring the story to American audiences, it may have made for a movie that reverberates more deeply with its audience.