Sarah Michelle Gellar

CINEMA: House that dwells on death

GRUDGE 2

Directed by Takashi Shimizu

Starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Amber Tamblyn, Arielle Kebbel, Teresa Palmer, Jennifer Beals, Edison Chen.

THE curse never dies. It just continues to wipe out anyone who stumbles upon the haunted house where a family was murdered by the husband who also took his own life after killing the wife, son and the pet cat.

The victims of the curse are the curious schoolchildren, the tenants of the house and just about anyone who comes into contact or knows the existence of the curse.

In a nutshell, Grudge 2 is about a series of deaths that befall the unlucky people who go inside the house.

One by one, they are infected by the malevolent curse known as “The Grudge,” which is quickly moving out of the burned-down house in Tokyo and spreading to everyone who crosses its path.

We get a little more understanding of The Grudge’s power and how it all began, by the transition of the contents in Grudge into the sequel. Those who didn’t catch Grudge will not be lost as the sequel explains what happened in the first film.

Unlike other horror movies, there’s no solution on how to stop the curse.

This movie continues from where the first left off, where Sarah Michelle Gellar’s character, Karen moves into the house and ends up burning it down.In the sequel, you see her death scene pretty much at the start of the movie.

Then the story continues with Karen’s sister Aubrey (played by Amber Tamblyn) who arrives in Tokyo with the sole intention of bringing her sister back to States. Unfortunately she sees her sister falling from the hospital building and dying before her very eyes.

Determined to find out the mystery of her sister’s behaviour and death, Aubrey befriends a Japanese journalist Eason (played by Edison Chen) who is working on the story of the cursed house to help her solve the puzzle.

There are also two different plots. One of them is about the three schoolgirls who visit the house for fun not knowing what they are getting into and another plot takes place in the US where the occupants of a building begin to die mysteriously.

On the whole, the movie doesn’t make a lot of sense and sometimes it’s even laughable, but there are some scary moments.

For the most part, it was difficult to follow the story, as there were many different plots happening at the same time. There were many back-and-forth scenes and it seemed almost like it was twotypes of horror movies going on at the same time.

Japanese actress Takako Fuji reprises her role as the terrorising Kayako, Ryo Ishibashi returns in a cameo as Detective Nakagawa and nine-year-old Ohga Tanaka takes on the role of the tortured Toshio.

Verdict: Grudge 2 is worth the watch.