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Description
The Grudge 2 is a spooky installment in Takashi Shimizu's hardworking Ju-on/Grudge series of horror pictures. It doesn't carry the disorienting thrill of the very first Japanese Ju-on
features, but it's a lot creepier than anybody could have expected. The
story picks up from the end of the first Hollywood version of The Grudge, and has nothing to do with Ju-on 2,
Shimizu's Japanese sequel. Sarah Michelle Gellar returns (a distinctly
supporting role) as an American woman traumatized by her experiences
with a haunted house in Tokyo; younger sister Amber Tamblyn flies over
to help out. This particular storyline doesn't have much meat on it; the
murder house is still there, and people who go inside have a
disconcerting habit of dropping dead. Fortunately, two other plots
thread into the basic one: a group of American schoolgirls in Tokyo
become intrigued by the legend of the house, and some Chicago apartment
dwellers are unsettled by domestic anxiety and the weird sounds coming
from next door. (This storyline, featuring Jennifer Beals, gives the
film its extremely satisfying opening sequence.) As usual with these
movies, sequences come to us in non-chronological order, and it's up to
us to piece it together. You can guess where the film is going, but the
slow trajectory toward its final sequences is surprisingly involving.
The movie was widely panned upon its release, which says more about the
presumption of the law of diminishing sequel returns than the film
itself--it's a decent little horror flick.
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