Massawyrm says GRUDGE 2 is Cinematic Nyquil, does that mean it's the nighttime, sniffling, sneezing coughing, aching, fever...

Hola all. Massawyrm here. Wow. You know, I’d heard, as many of you have, just how bad The Grudge 2 was. But I just couldn’t believe it was that bad. I mean, it’s a serious horror film. How long, boring, tedious, repetitive, monotonous, droning, dreadful, mind-numbing, incessant, tiresome, unending and just plain awful could it be? Well, for one thing, it makes that last sentence look like an action packed thrill ride. Seriously. This thing isn’t so much bad as it is just fucking duller than a 9 part Ken Burns documentary series on the benefits of weather stripping. It’s cinematic Nyquil. Jules-Henri Poincare’ once wrote ”…an accumulation of facts is no more science than a heap of stones is a house.” I subject to you that the same can be said about set pieces. An accumulation of set pieces is no more a movie than…dot dot dot. And that’s the real problem here. The Grudge 2 isn’t actually a movie as much as it is a series of scenes involving characters we don’t give two shits about seeing that kid cower in the corner while his mom with bad hair grabs our hapless victim when they least expect it. Over and over and over again. This film is just an excuse to find new places for that angry bitch to crawl out of. It’s a film that makes me feel guilty for any film I’ve ever characterized as having wafer thin characters or clichés. Because this one takes the fucking take. This movie doesn’t actually have characters. Oh, it has actors. But not characters. Showing us that someone is a schoolgirl and telling us that she has been at this school for sixth months IS NOT A CHARACTER HISTORY. In order to actually care about said character, we need something a little more than ‘woman who has moved in with a man with two kids.’ What? Did the wife die? Are the man and woman married now? Do they actually have last names? And what about this sister of the girl from the last movie? Her mom is dying and she liked her sister more. We ever gonna learn anything more about her? Nope. You have just learned everything there is to know about every major character in the movie. That’s it. No telling scenes about who our protagonists are, not even a pap set up explaining the various roles each character falls into. Nothing. And yet they manage to stretch that shit out for an excruciating 99 minutes. Now I’m a big fan of short hand – giving small, easily recognizable character moments that convey things it would just take too long to explain that we all get right off the bat anyway. But you cannot make an entire film out of them. Here they try really hard to do just that. There is not one, single, genuine moment in the whole film. No real emotion, nothing to care about as each character gets dragged into the abyss. There’s actually a moment in the film, however, where things begin to get interesting. After about 45 minutes of she-bitch crawling out of toilets and emulsion trays and more shower scenes shot like shampoo commercials in which young girls pull black hairs out of their own head, then and only then are we treated to something resembling a story. And despite the fact that we’re supposed to believe that one of the only people our protagonist encounters in Japan who can actually speak English is the one person she needs exposition from, an ancient mystic who lives in the woods, I was ready to buy it. Because I needed something, anything, to keep me from a J-Horror induced coma. But wait, despite an elaborate backstory boiled down to a one minute monologue that actually borders on being something new and different, we’re told concretely No, that has nothing to do with this. It’s only backstory you stupid fucking American. This all started with the Curse, just like we told you in the last movie. So why the one minute monologue? Oh, right, because without it, it would have been an excruciating 98-minute movie. We do learn one important fact from this little adventure deep into the heart of perfect English speaking Japan. The curse will only grow. It cannot be stopped. Once it has a hold of you it will never let go and it will continue to spread until the costs of making and marketing a film about it outweighs the profits it generates. Will you, the movie going public help me? Can we stop this curse before it continues to spread into the inevitable The Grudge 3: Really, How Could This Possibly Be Any Worse Than the Last One? You know, it was bad enough that they took Ju-On and made a piss poor remake out of it, removing several important storylines and replacing them with shit that just plum didn’t make a lick of sense (like the ripped off jaw), and almost completely removing the temporal element of the film altogether – watching the effects of this house on people over the course of a decade. But The Grudge 2 is actually based upon…Ju-On. Huh? Yeah, remember the storylines they cut out of part one? Well, they brought them back for part 2 and added more new shit that doesn’t make any sense. Technically, this is simply a continuation of the remake process – only this time feeling like everything that was cut out of the first one for a reason. They even take one of the best story elements of Ju-on, the fact that the schoolgirl story and the cop story are actually very closely linked, adding an extra level of tragedy, and they throw that right out the window. Nope. This time they have zero to do with one another. Grrrrreat. Takashi Shimizu. The dude’s done. Seriously man. He’s made an entire career out of these films. Seven. Seven films about the same women killing people the same way over and over again. I mean, shit, at this point Japan is sending them straight to video. What the hell does that tell you Takashi? Find a new story. It’s clear from watching this that you were as bored directing it as I was watching it, and it was a struggle to keep my eyes open. You made me fight for consciousness. And I can feel that same level of energy in every tired shot in this film. Oh, and next time put a warning label on the film about driving or operating heavy machinery after seeing this. Someone’s gonna get killed. Until next time friends, smoke ‘em if ya got ‘em. I know I will. Massawyrm Got something for the Wyrm? Mail it here.