Monday was Grudge day. No, it wasn’t me reminding myself of all the people who I feel have wronged me. I finally watched The Grudge! Twice.
My pal Tyler and I decided to make the (poor) decision to watch a 10pm showing of the new Grudge remake, aptly titled The Grudge (2020). However, I had never seen a Grudge movie before! So we decided to watch the original, Ju-On: The Grudge (2002).
Fair warning, if anyone ever decides to turn my blog into a drinking game, I’d recommend skipping this week’s post. I’m going to say Grudge a LOT, if the paragraph above is any indication. Save yourselves, you’ve been warned.
Let me start with the original, Ju-On: The Grudge. I vaguely knew what to expect of it, thanks in part to general pop culture and an even larger part to Scary Story 4 (2006). I was less prepared for the timeline jumping, and I’m not going to lie, it lost me a little bit. Not enough to be completely disengaged, but enough that I looked up the Wikipedia summary to make sure I was following along correctly (thankfully, I was). I feel this movie is a really good example to the importance of sound design, especially in horror. Between the music, sound effects, and grumbly noises, you could be looking at a motionless bathroom stall door, and be terrified. It plays well on anticipation.
Which is the main issue I had with The Grudge (2020). There is little to no anticipation; it gets its spooks from jumpscares. Don’t get me wrong; I love jump scares. When used correctly, they’re great! Instant terror when you thought you were safe (at least marginally). But this movie was only jumpscares. As someone who normally only gets legitimately scared by, well, jumpscares, I grew tired of the schtick real quick. This one also had a lot of timeline jumping, but I was prepared from the film I had watched an hour beforehand, and so I was able to follow it a little better.
Why does every horror movie sequel/remake feel the need to include clumsy wink to the audience through lackluster dialogue joking about death? The only thing that’s done by John Cho’s character telling his wife that he’s going to “murder her… with deliciousness” by making breakfast is reminding me that I’m sitting in a theater, watching something that has already been made multiple times.
Other than that, there are so many more lines that I wish I could share, because the script is at times truly horrendous, but they wouldn’t make any goddamn sense out of context. Like, it wouldn’t even be a “that’s funny even though I don’t understand it” kind of out of context. It would just be confusing. I will include one, though, solely because I literally, physically could not stop laughing in the silent movie theater after it was said, and because I would start laughing again at random points in the film whenever I thought of it.
Can I get you anything? Water? Pie? My mother?
Detective Goodman
Yes, this was also my review on Letterboxd. Normally I like to keep those reviews and my blog reviews separate, but I couldn’t pass up mentioning this quote one last time (as well as every time anyone visits my apartment from now on).
I didn’t really watch anything else new this week. I tried to watch Labyrinth (198_), but the DVD from the library was so scratched I couldn’t get past the 3-minute mark. I watched the first episode of Golan the Insatiable, but that was a disappointment. It’s trying to be edgy, but it’s just painful. I could barely get through the first episode, and it was only 10 minutes long! I also watched two episodes of Sekko Boys, an anime about an idol pop group who are also marble busts of Greek/Roman Gods and such. Yeah (evidence below).
A last minute addition was the at-home watch party double feature of Jesus Christ Superstar (1973) and Repo! The Genetic Opera (2008). One’s a masterpiece, one’s a trainwreck (is that considered blasphemy?).
Repo! is my love. The songs are terrible, the acting is rough, Paris Hilton is in it for some reason. But I can never stay away from it. It’s campy and it’s cringey, and it’s brilliant. Jesus Christ Superstar, on the other hand, wants to be all those things, and fails miserably at it. For all the reasons that I think it would make a good stage play, it’s a bad movie. It’s hard to sincerely call a group a “mob” when it’s four people standing alone in a completely empty desert. It’s hard to sing along when you can barely heart what they’re saying over the inconsistent audio levels. My Gus and I had to have a very serious talk after the movie ended, because everyone else seemed to love it so much we were sure we were missing something. Maybe we just don’t “get” it, and for once, I’m fine with being on the outside for this. Throughout the entire movie, I honestly did not know if we were ten minutes in or two hours in, and there were absolutely zero plot points that helped point me in the right direction. Sadly, this is a musical that I cannot defend. Points for the soldiers in purple tank tops, though.
Unofficial Ratings
Ju-On: The Grudge
If I lived with anyone besides my cat, I would be doing that gurgley throat sound literally every night just to freak them out.
The Grudge
This really felt like a student production, complete with credits featuring the same two names over and over again.
Repo! The Genetic Opera
It goes in a little glass vial. A little glass vial? A LITTLE GLASS VIAL!
Jesus Christ Superstar
One of the few cults I am perfectly fine not being a part of, thankyouverymuch.
Film Student Watchlist 