Sarah Michelle Gellar

Seeing as Halloween is upon us it isn’t surprising that the odd scary film will appear in the cinema. It isn’t surprising either that it will merely be a predictable and pointless sequel to an equally pointless first instalment. Although Sarah Michelle Gellar, the vampire slayer herself appears in the Grudge 2 for all of five minutes, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be a good movie, in fact it is the opposite.

Karen’s (Gellar) sister Aubrey (Amber Tambyln) is sent to Tokyo by her ailing mother to bring her sister home following the fire in which Karen’s boyfriend perished. Along with photo journalist Eason (Edison Chen) Aubrey endeavours to discover why Karen set fire to a house, and what caused her subsequent death. At the same time three Tokyo high school girls, having visited the “haunted” house start to feel the after affects of entering the unknown, with devastating consequences.

Although the sequel explains the chain of events in both films it does nothing else except highlight the fact that director Shimizu shouldn’t have bothered with the second film seeing as he didn’t produce anything remotely horrifying. In fact there is one scene involving the three high school girls and their principal, which is as funny as any comedy.

In addition, in an effort to appear more thought provoking and complex the curse makes its way to Chicago, where an unsuspecting family also find themselves consumed by rage and at the mercy of scary eyes, heaps of black hair and frail white hands that appear out of nowhere. Despite an abundance of efforts to make you jump out of your seat with sheer fright, nothing, even long locks of black hair rapidly wrapping around your face, would make you scream. Ultimately the Grudge 2 is a run-of-the-mill horror film which fails miserably.