The Grudge 2 (2006)

Rating:
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Starring: Sarah Michelle Gellar, Amber Tamblyn, Edison Chen, Arielle Kebbel, Jennifer Beals

The American remake of the second “Grudge” film fails as a story and as a horror flick. Director Takashi Shimizu seems to have little interest in his job, delivering an incoherent story, few of the shocks and thrills the genre demands, and very little in the way of new ideas in this inoffensively dull little movie. It ain’t “The Descent,” people.

For those wondering how it compares to the original (or the original remake, that is) it’s worth noting that the overall rating on Rotten Tomatoes gave the Japanese original of the first film 55 percent, but only 40 percent for the initial remake — compared to about 7 percent for this Americanized installment. Even if you tend to discount reviewers’ takes on the horror genre, that kind of drop-off is hard to overlook.

The film is a mess all the way through, and to catalogue its sins would be a waste of time. The two biggest points: My companion at the screening commented that the entire film seemed gratuitous, not in the usual sense of pointless sex (there’s none) or violence (not much), but in the sense that nothing that happens is earned by the story or made interesting by the characters. And secondly, for some reason the ghostly hauntings in Chicago are of a completely different nature (weirdly left almost entirely off-screen) than in the two Tokyo storylines — like it’s a bit of a completely different film spliced in. With the good parts left out.

While the movie’s good qualities are nowhere near worthy of the ballpark-$10 admission price, it costs nothing but a few minutes’ time to discuss them here. The hacked-up three-track story (it comes together at the end with a truly underwhelming revelation) includes some fine and underused supporting actors. Edison Chen plays the Tokyo tour guide to Amber Tamblyn, sister to Sarah Michelle Gellar, left traumatized by the first “Grudge” film. He’s likeable and talented and thus pretty much gets what he deserves. In a Chicago storyline that doesn’t seem to match the rest of the film at all, an annoying little boy’s curiosity apparently outweighs any sense of self-preservation as he’s drawn to the sort of supernatural nastiness the film is about, but his older sister, played by Teresa Palmer, is loving, charming and as doomed as doomed can be.

The film revolves around the indiscriminately malevolent ghosts — murdered mother and son — from a haunted and now fire-gutted Tokyo house killing everyone who crosses their path. While Mama Ghost lurching gruesomely at the screen holds less power than when the little girl ghost did it in “The Ring,” a few of the effects are genuinely creepy and surprising. When the film gives us creepy-things-go-”boo,” it feels pretty standard, but when the fimmakers mess with physics to create brief moments of truly unsettling surreality, they’re onto something. Particularly, the final scene at the film’s climax, involving a character in a hooded sweatshirt, are quick, small, but deliciously disturbing.

Fans of the first film should note that Sarah Michelle Gellar is barely present in the film, her role about the size of Elizabeth Hurley’s in the second “Austin Powers” movie. Tamblyn’s storyline provides the connective thread to the earlier movie, and new cast make up the other two sections.

The movie doesn’t offer much for anyone except two categories of hard-core horror fans. If you loved the first “Grudge” and just gotta have more, and don’t care how you get it … bon appetit. And if you’re the sort of completist horror fan who can put up with the film’s failings to get to those few moments of freshness, you’ll leave the theater vaguely disappointed, but not entirely unrewarded.