Sarah Michelle Gellar

Tokyo, the largest city in Japan and one of the great mysteries of the Far East; the Tokyo lifestyle is unlike that of any other city in the world. Japan’s lengthy history of film is centered around the city, although there haven’t been nearly as many Hollywood films produced there, with recent exceptions being Tom Cruise’s The Last Samurai and the English language horror remake, The Grudge.

With that in mind, ComingSoon.net got a chance to visit set of The Grudge 2, being filmed at Japan’s legendary Toho Sound Studios, home to the "Godzilla" movies and some of the greatest samurai films ever made. As it approaches its 75th Anniversary, Toho has been expanding and trying to break away from its Godzilla image, having recently received $20 million dollars for an expansion thanks to the Denzu company. While it will continue being one of Japan’s top movie studios, it will also be filming many Japanese television shows in the future. It was a great time to be in Japan and at Toho, because the cherry blossoms, which literally only blossom for a week each year, were in full bloom, and it gave Toho a colorful and sunny spring feel, which couldn’t be any more different than the dark nature of the film being made there.

The production for The Grudge 2 had taken over three of the soundstages at Toho, which is a big step-up from director Takashi Shimizu’s earlier films, which were mainly shot in real locations and at smaller studios. They’ve actually built many of the sets for the movie within the walls of the soundstage. It was surprising how small these sets were, barely enough room for the actors and a couple cameramen. Apparently, Shimizu likes working within scale rather than making sets larger and thereby more effective for shooting.

Despite the first "Grudge" having been such a huge success, Shimizu has not been working very differently and the unit publicist noted that he had more confidence in him as a director, as they were into their 43rd day of their planned 63 shootings days. It’s interesting that the first "Grudge" only took 40 days to film, so Shimizu has already been working on the sequel longer than any of his previous films. That said, they’ve added some of the luxuries of a normal Hollywood movie set, such as having craft services, useful due to Shimizu-San’s habit of working without taking breaks.

Although Sarah Michelle Gellar will be returning for the sequel as Karen, her role will be fairly minimal since she’ll only be filming in Japan for two days, presumably to resolve the cliffhanger from the first movie. Instead, the focus shifts to actress Amber Tamblyn of Joan of Arcadia and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, who plays Karen’s sister Aubrey, who comes to Tokyo to find out what happened to her missing sister. Aubrey is helped in her search for answers by another new character named Eason, a Hong Kong journalist who has come to Tokyo to explore the mysterious goings-on at the house from the previous film. Eason is played by Edison Chen, a Vancouver-born actor of Chinese descent who had mainly been working in Hong Kong, most notably on the classic "Infernal Affairs" crime trilogy, in which he played Agent Lau. While English is his first language, The Grudge 2 will be his first English-language role in a movie, and it’s a big break for the 26-year-old actor.

Returning for the sixth time is actress Takako Fuzi, who has been playing the ghost of Kayako Saeki, the woman whose murder began the curse, ever since Shimizu started making videos based on the premise. Oddly, her connection to Shimizu goes beyond their work on those films, since the two of them share a similar birthdate, same year and everything. We had a chance to speak to her a bit before she spent the two hours getting into her distinctive hair and make-up, and she was actually quite lovely and ebullient, despite admitting a love for scaring people who recognize her in the street. Unfortunately, Yuya Ozeki, who played the creepy kid Toshio in the Japanese films and the last movie, had gotten too old to reprise the role for a fourth time, and they had hired a newcomer, 10-year-old Ohga Tanaka, to take over the role for the sequel.

Another new addition to the cast is Jennifer "Flashdance" Beals as Trish, who is the mother of a teen girl in one of the sequel’s three or four concurrent storylines, which are once again told in a non-linear fashion. Later, Shimizu would tell us that there were three main things that he wanted the sequel to convey in terms of moving the story forward. Obviously, the first one was to find out what happened to Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character after the first movie, but it also would go further into how the Grudge is spread from one person to the other, as well as showing more of Kayako’s backstory, not only as a child, but also showing more of her relationship with her murderous husband. We were told that violent scenes from the first English remake had to be excised, because scenes of domestic abuse would have automatically gotten the movie the dreaded R-rating.

When we arrived at Toho, they had already broken down the set for the exteriors of the house, which had been severely damaged by the fire set by Gellar’s character in the first movie. Most would presume that those scenes were shot on location somewhere, but the outside of the house was actually created on the soundstage, which must have been impressive. Instead, they had moved onto interior scenes, and as we arrived on Toho’s Stage 7, we were given a tour of two of the smaller sets carefully dressed up to represent two Tokyo apartments down to the minutest detail. The first of these sets was Karen’s apartment, which they recreated from the first film, but the main set for the day was a recreation of Eason’s apartment, which also acts as his office and photo studio. Off to one side, there was a fully realized darkroom, lined with eerie images of the ghost Kayako in all her glory, which would obviously play an important part in some of the film’s most intense scenes.

The scene being shot that day as we waited to talk to Shimizu and his cast, was a dialogue scene between Amber and Edison, in which they discuss their respective backgrounds with Aubrey telling Eason how different she is from her sister and how they got into fight the last time they saw each other. Eason seemed to be subtly hitting on the bereaved Aubrey, but then to break the tension, he offers to make her some tea. We were informed that Shimizu’s English had been improving, yet he still relies on producer Michael Kirk to listen to the dialogue to make sure it was clear, while he dealt with the mood, the technical stuff and the emotions being expressed.

We then spent a bit of time watching Edison preparing tea for his guest, mildly amused by the evolution of the tea pouring. The tea bag labels wouldn’t behave, falling into the cups when he poured water, and after a few takes, they figured out the perfect way to pour the water. Afterwards, noticing that Aubrey is sleeping, he walks into the darkroom to end that scene. They then started working on a scene from the next morning where Aubrey wakes up on the couch and starts looking for Edison. We can’t really reveal the scene that takes place in between or what happens next. Takako revealed to us later that she does a lot in the darkroom besides appearing in the photographs. Apparently, she will come out of the pictures developing in the darkroom sinks, which would involve her floating in a tank of water, something she hadn’t done before.

Later, we headed over to Stage 1, Toho’s oldest soundstage, where two more sets were being built. One of them would be the apartment of the character played by actress Arielle Kebbel, and then the more elaborate one was a recreation of Kayako’s childhood home in the country, which Aubrey would visit in order to find out more about the cursed ghost terrorizing her. The interior of the house was gorgeous with unblemished hardwood floors and other real materials to bring it to life. They had already filmed the exteriors of that house on location out in the countryside somewhere, but they would start filming the interior scenes on that set the following week.

Apparently, the film will also have a racy scene in a Japanese Love Motel, a notorious place that charges an hourly rate so that teen girls and their boyfriends can go there to have sex. When we spoke to Takako, she revealed that she would make an entrance coming out of a mirror in the room, and that they used practical FX to pull that off, actually building a duplicate room in the back of the mirror to create this effect, rather than going for the far easier method of doing it via CGI.

Although we were able to get a general idea of the plot for the second film, we were told that the non-linear nature of the film would make it harder to put all the pieces together in terms of how the various stories are connected and their chronology. It certainly sounds like those who loved The Grudge and the Japanese films will be thrilled with all of the new depth brought to the Ju-On myth by the American sequel.

The Grudge 2 is scheduled for release on Friday, October 13. Look for full interviews with director Takashi Shimizu and actress Amber Tamlyn in the next week or so.