Hidey-Ho Everybody and Welcome to yet another edition of WTFHM!
Okay, so yeah, it’s been a minute since I’ve been able to post due to Mother’s Day, Game of Thrones and Memorial Day Cookout Shenanigans, but that's all right since this week, I’ve got two movies to get through.
Now, before y’all dig into me about not ever having seen these movies, let me just say that I did see the American version of the first Grudge a long time ago. It was right after The Ring came out and I was just really discovering the wonderful world of Asian horror. During my informal education of A-Horror, I learned two very important things.
1) With only a couple of exceptions that I’ve seen so far, Asian horror movies do not translate well to American cinema. To put it delicately, they almost ALWAYS suck.
2) If you want to know why I don't like remakes, refer to number one.
I don’t know what’s wrong with American filmmakers and Asian Horror movie remakes? I mean, they either change the whole story or rely on so many special effects that you kind of lose track of what we were talking about in the first place. All I know is that if there is an Asian version out there, ten to one, it’s way better than the trash you just watched.
All that being said, I’m gonna assume that if you are reading this, then you’re probably very familiar with The Grudge and Ju-on, so let’s just slide into The Grudge 2.
The Grudge 2 starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Amber Tamblyn, Arielle Kebbel, Takako Fuji, Edison Chen, Sarah Roemer, Misako Uno, Matthew Knight, Teresa Palmer, Ohga Tanaka, Jennifer Beals, and Christopher Cousins.
Why, do you ask, is there a cast of thousands this movie? Well, that’s because this movie tells three, count ‘em THREE stories surrounding the Ju-on curse. The stories aren’t linear, so for the sake of my fingers, I’ll give you a quick rehash of them. First up:
So, first of all, we have to bridge that connection between movies. At the end of the last movie, we assume Karen (Gellar) has died in the ill-fated Grudge house. At the beginning of this movie, we see that not only is she still alive, but she’s recovering in a hospital. Karen’s mother calls her sister Aubrey (Tamblyn) and tells her to fly to Japan to see about her. Aubrey’s all “Maaahhh, do I have to?” Her mother’s like “WTF? Yes, she’s in the hospital, dammit and I’m too sick to go. Go see your sister.” Aubrey’s all:
Okay, so Aubrey goes to Japan to see about her sister. Her sister tries to tell her that there’s a homicidal ghost on the loose, but goes nuts and ends up being restrained. Aubrey, distraught leaves her sister and runs into journalist Eason (Chen) who tells her all about the curse and that’s he’s been investigating some deaths surrounding it.
Meanwhile, Karen gets chased through the hospital and ends up leaping off the roof of the building to try to escape. Aubrey and Eason witness her death, which leaves Aubrey understandably distraught.
Eason tells Aubrey that he was the one that rescued Karen and ever since he’d been investigating the Saeki murder case and the deaths surrounding it. The two of them start their investigation. During the process, Eason gets murdered by the Kayako Saeki ghost while trying to develop pictures he took of the house.
Aubrey finds him dead, which leads her to go to the house. She finds Kayako’s diary in the old house and is magically transported to the day she died….where the spirits take over. Aubrey is lured in by Toshio the Cat Boy Ghost (Tanaka) and, well, she doesn’t make it to Grudge 3.
Let’s Scare Allison To Death
They go to the house and lock Allison in a closet for a joke. Allison is terrified and the girls are laughing their butts off...until they find they can’t get Allison out. While in the closet, Allison meets the Kayako ghost (Fuji) creepily crawling towards her. She freaks out and breaks the door open, escaping. All three girls leave the house relatively unharmed.
Welp, things start getting freaky after that. The next day, Miyuki’s all “I’m going on a date with my boyfriend and I’m TOTALLY putting out tonight”. Vanessa’s like, “It’s about time! Yay!”
(Yeah, I know, guys, but keep in mind, this movie was in 2006. That whole dumb horny teenager trope thing was still a thing).
Miyuki goes on a date with her boyfriend which is in a cheesy hotel room that’s all shag carpet and red satin sheets. Her boyfriend’s life, “I’m gonna take a shower, baby.”
He does and Miyuki is checking herself out in the mirror over the bed and also questioning her life decisions. She gets stalked by the Kayako ghost and eventually gets yanked through the mirror.
After a few days of being missing, the school’s counselor calls Vanessa and Allison in to question them about her whereabouts. Neither girl knows anything and Allison gets distraught and runs out of the therapist’s office. The therapist goes after her, leaving Vanessa all alone. Vanessa tries texting Miyuki without any success. Then Kayako starts stalking her in the office and THEN, you guessed it, Vanessa’s not making it to The Grudge 3 either.
Allison goes to her counselor after all this and tells her that she thinks the curse from the house took her friends. The counselor says, “Nah, I’ve been there and it’s all fine!” Then turns into Kayako. Then her friends who are now ghosts show up. That’s pretty much where we leave off with that story.
My Childhood WCW Murders Her Whole Family
All right, the last story surrounds The Kimbles who just moved into an apartment in Chicago. So, Bill(Cousins) has just remarried. His new wife Trish (Beals) is trying to get along with their kids Jake(Knight) and Lacey (Roemer). Lacey’s all good with Trish, but Jake’s all:
So, everything’s all fine and good until one day, Jake sees his neighbor bringing a strange girl in a hoodie back to his apartment. After that, strange things start happening in the apartment and to everyone surrounding the family. Jake, being the “I see dead people” kid in this flick tries to tell his parents that something isn’t right around here. They blow him off.
He tries to tell his sister, she blows him off...even though weird stuff is happening to her and her friends at school too. Like drinking massive amounts of milk in one sitting.
So, okay, things get out of hand pretty quickly and Bill and Trish start fighting because, you know, the ghost is messing with them. One day when the kids are away at school, Trish kills her husband by pouring bacon grease on his head, then hitting him with it. When the kids come home, she continues the killing spree. Jake escapes long enough to find the strange hooded girl in a room cutting her hair.
He approaches her and finds that she’s actually Allison. The girl from the last story. Allison tells him that the ghost followed her back, right before she turns into Kayako and attacks Jake.
Ooooh-kay. So.
The Grudge 3 starring Matthew Knight, Shawnee Smith, Aiko Horiuchi, Emi Ikehata, Shima Tsuchiya, Johanna Braddy, Beau Mirchoff, Jadie Rose Hobson, Marina Sirtis, and Gil McKinney.
In the next installment, we are following Jake who’s spending some time in a psycho ward. His doctor, Dr. Sullivan (Smith) tells Jake that there’s no such thing as revenge ghosts. Jake tells her yes there is and one of them is coming to kill him. He begs her not to leave him alone, but she’s like; “Sorry, kid!”
She leaves him alone and the ghost totally jacks him up. The security camera catches it on film and the security sees it and goes...wow, that’s weird.
He calmly calls Dr. Sullivan and tells her that they should probably go check on Jake. She, seeing the urgency in the call, rushes to the room he’s being kept in and opens the door, only to find poor Jake won’t be making it to the Grudge reboot (Yeah. That’s a thing that’s happening.)
Okay, so, a whole country away, Kayako’s sister Naoko(Ikehata) hears about Jake’s death through a news report and decides that now, NOW, after three movies, NOW is the time to go and stop the curse. She books a flight to Chicago.
Meanwhile, in Chicago, siblings Max (McKinney) and Lisa (Braddy) are living in the apartment where the Kimbles were murdered. Max is the landlord and is desperate to rent rooms (but nobody's renting because a whole frickin’ family died there). While Lisa talks about running away to design school and screwing her boyfriend in all the vacant apartments, Max is just trying to keep food on the table AND take care of their sickly younger sister, Rose (Hobson).
Rose talks a lot about seeing a mysterious boy in one of the apartments, but Max and Lisa ignore her, because...yeah. She’s a kid and no one listens to kids in horror movies.
So, okay, weird things start happening all over the apartment. Eventually, Naoko shows up as a potential tenant, blah, blah.
Oh, by the way, you might’ve noticed one of the names I listed earlier as being kind of familiar - familiar if you’re a Star Trek fan.
Yup, Counselor Troi plays their neighbor Gretchen who paints and watches Rose from time to time. Don’t get too attached though. She’s got like two scenes and Kayako ends up killing her.
Okay, so people are dying all over the apartment. Max is trying to deal with the fallout and Lisa and Naoko start getting close. Naoko tells her about her sister and how they were brought up by a medium that took demons out of people and put them into her sister...but that’s got nothing to do with what’s going on now.
Which is a weird flex for the writers, actually. I mean, they discuss Kayako’s origins for at least two out of the three movies and both times it’s “Yeah, she had demons put in her, but she’s a revenge ghost because she was murdered by her husband. One has nothing to do with the other.”
Anyway, Naoko tells her that she knows how to stop the curse. Lisa’s like “I’m good on that, crazy lady.”
She looks up Jake’s doctor, Dr. Sullivan and talks to her about what happened. Sullivan tells her the story of the Saeki murders in Japan and explains that Jake was claiming to see Kayako’s son Toshio. She shows Lisa a photo and Lisa’s all, “Waaaayminit...That’s the kid in our apartment complex!”
So, she leaves, Dr. Sullivan gets stalked and killed by Kayako shortly thereafter.
From that point, things finally pick up. Lisa talks to her boyfriend about what’s happening, her boyfriend’s all yeah, right, her boyfriend’s dead in the next scene.
Meanwhile, Max starts to become aggressive and violent. He goes full psycho when the building owner tells him he’s going to have to fire him and let a management company take over the landlord position. Max’s response is, of course, to attack him. Which would be bad if Toshio didn’t finish him off in the car.
So, later, Max flips out on Lisa and kicks her out of the apartment. Lisa comes back later and finds Max in a possessed state. She grabs Rose and runs over to Naoko’s apartment.
Naoko tells her that they have to perform a ritual to cleanse the apartment. Lisa’s all, “Okay!” What happens next goes something like;
Naoko: “So, let’s do this ritual that will save all of our lives!”
Lisa: “Yes! Let’s!”
*does ritual, pours blood like substance into a bowl and gives it to Rose*
Naoko: “Drink this.”
Rose: “I’m not drinking that.”
Naoko: “If you don’t, we’ll all die.”
Rose: “It looks weird.”
Lisa: “It sure does. She’s not drinking that.”
Naoko: “But...if you don’t drink it, we’ll all die. You kind of have to drink it.”
Rose: “Nope, not gonna do it.”
Lisa: “Yeah. You’re crazy. She’s not drinking that.”
Naoko: *stares in shaman*
While they fight about it, Max goes full-on American Psycho and breaks into the room, attacking Naoko. He pursues her into the hallway where he ends up stabbing and killing her. Kayako, meanwhile, is chasing Lisa and Rose through the apartment. Kayako corners Lisa and Rose goes back to Naoko’s apartment and thinks, “Gee, maybe I should drink this after all!” She does and Kayako disappears and Max returns to normal.
Unfortunately, though, when Max murdered Naoko, she turned into a revenge ghost. She murders Max (which is fine, because he was probably gonna get the electric chair anyway for killing Naoko in the first place). She becomes the new Grudge ghost, the cops show up, Lisa tells Rose everything’s gonna be fine, and...that’s it.
So, remember how I said that Asian remakes generally suck with only a handful of exceptions? Yeah, this wasn’t one of the exceptions.
If we’re being honest, the light was barely flickering after the first movie. All three of the Grudge remakes were all very hamfisted attempts at...well...good horror movies. I mean, you might be into it if Japanese ghost girls freak you out in particular, but if you were to come up to me and ask me to recommend a good Japanese horror movie with a ghost girl in it, I can come up with at least three off the top of my head before I’d ever recommended The Grudge series. And they would probably be original A-Horror flicks.
In fact, do yourself a favor, skip the remakes altogether and watch the originals.
So. Yeah. No jewels. No raspberries though. I recognize they have a place in the horror lexicon and a lot of you like them for some reason, so, yeah. I'll just give it a dancing Kayako.
Next week, we look at a fairly recent movie! Hereditary! I’d been waiting to watch this one for quite some time and I heard some good, good things about it. I’m excited!
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