Movie Rental Review – The Grudge

I remember the commercial previews for when this movie first came out, and also had heard from some people that it was really supposed to be scary – even scarier than The Ring. Since The Ring was a very scary movie, it seemed such a boast was suitably impressive enough to warrant a viewing of this movie once and for all.

            The most memorable part of the commercial was the screeching meowing that a little Japanese boy made, and that was what was referred to me, as well. Naturally, that was the only thing  specifically remembered from the previews, as well. Yet, it was not nearly as prominent in the movie as it seemed it should or could have been.

            In fact, the story line was rather week. It was not as much about a little boy who meowed like a cat as it was about an entire family, particularly an obsessed and apparently insane teenaged Japanese girl who loved her professor, but knew he was not even aware that she existed. She was caught in a toxic home situation with an equally insane father, and you get the clear picture that some strange and terrible things have happened in this typically haunted house, conveniently cast in the most isolated little pocket of a major Japanese city.

            It seemed this movie was not nearly as scary as it's billing, and had in fact many of the most formulaic and predictable patterns of the horror movie genre. The glimpses of an abused and, ultimately, deadly tragic past, the mysterious and repeated appearances of apparitions, the strange noises accompanied with  eerie music just before something horrible was about to happen, and so on and so forth.

            The movie has it's moments, and it's a fun enough movie to watch. Any horror fan will likely not feel completely disappointed with this one.

            Yet, ultimately, it falls far short of the Ring, or my other personal favorite of horror movies, the original Halloween. It just is not as good, let alone as scary. Still, it would not be out of place in some kind of horrorfest, and if you want to watch a whole bunch of scary movies, this one would not be completely out of place, obviously. Just don't make it the centerpiece, because it's not strong enough, and can't compete with the more classic horrors like Halloween, or the more imaginative movies like The Ring, or another movie that is often overlooked, but which was really scary – Event Horizon, which was a sci-fi horror movie from back in 1997.