I woke up from a dream about 3:30 last night. She pressed her hands up against the shower door, then looked up at me!
I was scared but I thought it was cool at the same time–took me a while to fall back asleep. Then I noticed the sound machine making high-pitched knocking noises. That helped…
I thought the opening credit graphics were really neat.
Just saw the movie and was a bit disappointed.
The Ring was extremely creepy. In fact I had a reaction much like Gabe and Tycho’s. So I went in expecting to have to sleep with a light on tonight, but came out making croaking noises to scare my girlfriend. To me, it felt like just a bunch of creepy events strung together with no real plot. The fact that there weren’t really any main characters means that there was no real time for development and I couldn’t get attached to the characters. Sure there were a few good “Boo!” moments, but nothing that really sticks with you as you’re walking out the theater.
As far as scary imagery it’s one of the best showings i have seen, as far as story and character deveopement it was unforgiveably bad…Rarely do i have such mixed feelings on a film.
I just saw it tonight, and I didn’t care for it at all.
The dialogue was terrible, the characters were mostly paper-thin, and the scary bits were so telegraphed that they weren’t all that scary at all. (At one point, I thought to myself, “Cue false scare involving cat”. And, lo and behold, the old horror movie cliché came true.)
Mostly I think I disliked the movie because of the female lead. I don’t think I’ve ever actually seen Sarah Michelle Geller in anything before, although I’ve of course heard of her. Good lord she can’t act! She had a perpetually stupid expression. (And is it just me, or is anyone else bothered by her duck lips? Ew.) By the end of the film I was quite happy to see her fail, and was hoping she’d be killed off.
The detective also annoyed me, at least in one important scene. Look, pal, you know the house has evil spirits in it. You go there to burn it down. So what do you do in this haunted house when you hear a noise? You go investigate the creepy noise, of course! How brilliant! Instead of lobbing a few molotov cocktails through a window and getting the hell out of Dodge, this hardheaded detective who knows of the evil that lurks in the house deliberately does the stupidest thing imaginable and goes to investigate the creepy noise. Sir, you were a stupid, stupid man, and you deserved to die.
The movie deserves some credit for a few effectively creepy visuals. The Jawless Wonder was cool, but it was so obvious what we were about to see when she turned around that it wasn’t that shocking. It bothered me that the sound effects were so overdone - when the Amazing Chinless Yoko turns her head a tiny bit, there’s this loud sound almost like a cracking or slapping. Also, the musical score basically said, “Hey, audience, guess what, you’re about to be more scared than you’ve ever been! Prepare! You’re not prepared enough!”. So when the creepy thing happened I was already expecting it and, well, prepared.
In short - some good visuals, poor acting, non-existent plot (although I actually liked the sort of random approach the movie took), stupid characters that I didn’t care about in the slightest, unless you count hate as a form of caring.
I loved “The Ring” and thought it was both frightening and interesting. “The Grudge”, in my opinion, is neither.
Just my two cents. 
Since my previous experience with Americanized Japanese horror movies (The Ring) left me sleeping with the lights on for two days, I was afraid The Grudge would do the same. While some moments were creepy enough, I was able to fall asleep quickly and comfortably later on.
I agree with what BlackKnight said about the telegraphed scary moments. I saw it at a theater that features a full bar and a full menu, and whenever the music ramped up, I would swallow whatever I was chewing because I knew a jump moment was coming up.
I expected more from the detective. While investigating the noise was just plain stupid, I’d also wondered if there was a greater purpose to his meeting on the rooftop with Karen. I was expecting another Bill Pullman moment.
I saw Ju-on a few weeks ago, so I guess that might make me somewhat biased, although it’s not like I automatically think that the originals are always better; I thought that The Ring was a VAST improvement on Ringu, for example. Still, while most people who haven’t seen Ju-on will probably be effectively creeped-out by The Grudge, I felt that it wasn’t nearly as effective as the original. I mean, the makeup and effects were better in The Grudge, but the pacing and the cinematography and story elements and the sound and so forth were better in Ju-on. Also to me it was kind of a distraction to have all of these Westerners there in the Japanese setting. In my opinion, if they wanted to redo Ju-on for a western audience, they would have been better off redoing the special effects and maybe rework the editing to make some of the chronology clearer.
Still, it only cost them $10 million to make, and it took in $40 million the opening weekend, so they must have done something right.
I’m not really a big fan of SMG, it’s true. But it’s Halloween weekend, and I’ve heard mostly good things, and I liked the Ring, so why not?
It wasn’t a bad movie, in and of itself, but SMG was so obnoxious. And it wasn’t her fault. It was entirely my fault. See, I liked Buffy because she wasn’t a simpering little bitch. Through the whole movie, I wanted SMG’s character Karen to jump up and kick some ass! Or at least, do something other than cry and huddle in the corner, for Christ’s sake. At the very, very least, stop returning to the house without a weapon!
It’s not her fault that I don’t like the cliche simpering female in the corner thing. I just wish that she had gone on to do something completely and utterly 100% different and the polar opposite of everything BtVS ever was and ever stood for, so I could see her more objectively. Watching the Grudge just made me think “I could have stayed home and watched Hush for free. And it wouldn’t have pissed me off.”
Also, it pretty much went for the cheap “monster jumps out from behind the bed” scares. Yeah, that’s pretty much the basis of all monster and ghost movies, but couldn’t there have been a little less jumping and more…I don’t know. I mean, I thought The Ring was a genuinely frightening movie. It had a lot of things going for it other than the cheap thrills, for example. I thought The Grudge had some nicely creepy and atmosphereic moments, but overall, it was just monsters jumping out from beneath the bed. If that kind of thing always gets you, then I expect you’ll enjoy the movie. If that sort of thing kind of bores you, then it might not be for you.
As my husband said when the lights came up “That’s two hours of my life I’ll never get back.”
I mentioned to a co-worker that the trailer for The Grudge was pretty creepy and I had no intention of seeing it since I don’t much like supernatural scary movies, sci-fi scary is okay but no supernatural or psycho killers scary. So a few days later I come in to find the DVD for Juon on my desk. I remind him I’m a big chicken and he says “just watch the trailer and see if it’s the same as The Grudge”.
It took me a couple days to get the courage to bring it home. Then I mention it to my boyfriend in case he wants to watch it and he decides that we can watch it today in broad daylight, since it’s Halloween we should watch a scary movie. Well, that’s all well and good in broad daylight but he had to go home this afternoon since he has to go to work early in the morning. So I am left home alone with my house full of cats, one of which is black with gold eyes and likes staring at me in the dark from his perch on the dresser.
Since we are free with the spoilers here I have some questions, too. As creepy as it was, it was even more confusing. The Japanese version had no exposition about what was going on, other than a short conversation by the detectives about other people who had disappeared there. So was the initial murder what set everything off or was there some sort of entity that was the source of all the bad stuff? Was the murdered woman (creepy crunchy crawl down the stairs lady) the same as the darker woman who seemed more like an apparition? What was the noise the weird dead chick was making?
The time jump with Izumi was confusing because it seemed like time had passed but you hear a news report saying the body of the missing 23 year old social worker had been found but I didn’t catch a mention on how long she had been missing before she was found.
Also, why did Rika’s friend Mariko get involved? She had never been in the house before, she only went there because of a boy in her class who hadn’t been showing up. Since it was the creepy little cat boy it seems to me he was haunting her even before she went to the house.
And were all the deserted streets littered with missing person flyers supposed to indicate that eventually everyone in the city ended up dead?
I didn’t like The Grudge. I didn’t like it for all the reasons listed in earlier posts; poor plot, extremely bad acting, just too cliched, etc.
I don’t scare easily. There was only one creepy moment in the film (the hallway video scene), and that was it. It was somewhat reminiscent of The Ring, in that respect.
Finally, I did not understand what was so scary about The Ring. I guess I’ve just become too jaded. The only part in that movie that even remotely creeped me out was the end scene; you know with the girl climbing out of the T.V and moving forward in jerks. The only reason it creeped me out was because I had a nightmare when I was about 12 (I’m 40 now), that was almost the same thing.
I saw it yesterday, and my reaction is pretty much “eh” as well. It just didn’t hold together at all; it was just a bunch of horror movie cliches loosely strung together with a “plot.” I did like that it was still set in Tokyo and was passably explained as to why there were so many Americans living there. And there were definitely some very creepy moments – the surveillance camera, and the climax when Karen went to “rescue” her boyfriend. But there was no substance to it, too many cheap shots, and it just seemed too derivative of The Ring.
And some scenes were just laughable – the sister’s elevator ride, with Tohio and his mother visible out the window on every single floor. And the idea that Karen could go on the internets and google “Tohio” and instantly come up with the relevant entry.
Still, it was fine as a junk food horror movie, as someone else described it. A friend and I saw it at a mall, and as we were waiting for her ride to show up, we saw a little Asian boy crawling along the floor past us. (We were standing next to the kids’ play area.) He stopped, then turned and looked up at us, and must’ve been surprised that we both kind of stared in horror at him and backed away. I hope we didn’t traumatize the poor kid.
She searched a specific newspaper’s online database. If she set up the parameters right (not that hard to do, and I remember she at least setting up a time frame), the information she wanted would appear in the first few hits. I’ve done that before.
What I didn’t understand is that when she searched for the relevant article, the original page that it was on came up (i.e. the front page of the newspaper with other stories from that day). Why would the two “unrelated” articles show up on the same page? Oh, so she could figure out the plot twist.
She looked at a Japanese newspaper for all stories with the word “Tohio” (and some other non-specific words that I can’t remember now but struck me as laughable at the time) in the year 2001.
That would be like my going to the New York Times and asking for all the stories that mention the name “Peter” in 2001, and immediately coming up with not just one, but both of the stories relevant to what I needed.
It looked like to me that she did a search, got the front page of the day’s paper, and it happened to have both shocking deaths on the front page that happened in the same time-frame.
I don’t think there’s anything that outlandish about that. True, links usually go right to the story, but why couldn’t it go to the date’s front page?
I liked it – but then, I like gothic horror/traditional ghost stories.
Sure, it was formulaic and predictable, but the atmosphere was perfect. Fantastic sound design, nice scoring, and creepy creepy art direction.
I did groan at the Googlewhack for “Toshio,” though. And the professor’s story on the same page doesn’t make any sense any way you slice it – unless the English version of the paper is on a two-day news cycle. 
There could have been a bit more suspense-- the only ambiguous thing for most of the movie was what exactly motivated the professor to take his dive – I was wondering if maybe he did in his stalker girlfriend and love child and then pinned it on the cuckold, and was a little disappointed when it turned out to be more straightforward.
But he had a really lame reason for doing himself in. Eesh. Deal, buddy.
What if her ghost was already tormenting him? He was behaving very, very strangely before he took his swandive.
That would make sense. I don’t remember the strange behavior, though-- I just remember his wife waking up, seeing him at the window, and him quickly going over.
Did I miss something in one of the analeptic bits?
I saw it: thought it was okay. I found the writing to be very Anime-ish… this woulda worked as an animated format. As live-action, it was okay.
There was one scene that was INCREDIBLY intense for me. This may be because I was incredibly stoned, but the scene with the security camera in the sister’s office building:
[spoiler]… When we first watch, as it’s being recorded, we see the ghost materialize out of the shadows and slowly start to creep down the hall, as some distortion goes on the tape. This is scary enough in and of itself… BUT when the detective watches the tape later, we see the shadow walk all the way out of the frame… and a few seconds later, the screen is completely blocked out by a mass passing in front of the camera…
… And then the eyes open.
Just this two giant, freaky eyes in a sea of blackness. Staring down on me, in the movie theatre.
It was the only time I’ve ever been tempted to cover my eyes while watching a scary movie. I wanted to get away. It had me beyond “crapping my pants” stage… I was almost ready to spontaneously grow a second asshole on my body just so I could crap enough to match my freak-outedness.[/spoiler]
Yeah. It was pretty good.
I’m tired of inconsistent powers for supernatural characters, though. If the ghost can instantly teleport anywhere it wants and kill its victims… why doesn’t it? Why bother scaring them first? Sure, there’d be no movie otherwise, but better writing would get around this.
Oh well. I’d recommend it as a renter, at least.
I got that the ghost cannot teleport, only follow the victims.
One interesting thing: When Yoko was taken, the closet door was open, that’s how she was able to get in.
When SMG went to the house, the closet door was taped. Was the house trying to protect others, or was that just an enticement to make SMG open it?
I assumed George Costanza’s mother-in-law taped them shut later because she got frightened and knew what happened.