A few months ago I reviewed the original Japanese film Ju-On for this magazine and, given this month’s topic is remakes, I decided there was never going to be a better time to see how far short of the original the American remake falls.

A friend recently gave me Season 3 of Buffy: The Vampire Slayer (my personal favourite season and the one after which it all goes wrong) and it reminded me what hot property Sarah Michelle Gellar once was. This movie was supposed to be her ticket to Hollywood super-stardom, and cleanse her of the many terrible movie roles she had had while still starring as Buffy (Cruel Intentions, Scooby-Doo). Though this movie is much better than Scooby Doo (hardly surprising), it’s just no real showcase for SMG. It isn’t, for example, what Lost in Translation was for Scarlett Johansson.

In this movie SMG plays Karen, an American in Japan working for a care centre which is unexplainably staffed by Americans. She is given the assignment of caring for a catatonic old lady after the previous carer Yoko (Yoko Maki) fails to show up for a week. We know that Yoko, being peppy and curious, investigated noises in the ceiling and got herself killed by a spooky spirit.

[As an aside, what is it about eternally curious peppy young girls? Where would horror movies be without them?]

The remake stays true to the original and maintains all the scares, which is a good thing. It keeps the disjointed narrative, as well, which culminates in SMG looping back to Bill Pullman (who opened the movie by jumping to his death) discovering the first dead body. Clearly the result of retaining the original director, all these keep the movie from being one of those soulless stupid remakes like Dukes of Hazzard -- only kidding, of course I mean Pulse (look it up).

The Grudge really should be a movie about Americans abroad. Well it is, but it pretends not to be. The best of this genre, Henry James’ The American, Oscar Wilde’s "The Canterville Ghost" or films like Lost in Translation show how Americans fail to fit in -- the action is driven by culture clash, it provides meaning to the setting. In The Grudge, though the movie is populated by Americans, there is no reason for them to be in Japan (other than the superficial reasons provided in the narrative) and there is no reason for the characters to be American. This is perhaps inevitable given the movie is an extremely faithful remake of the original. In the original Japanese characters in Japan made perfect sense; in the remake, Americans acting like slightly vaguer white Japanese people leaves this continuing sense of ill-fit or discordance.

It’s difficult to describe, but what pervades the whole movie is a sense of ‘what are they doing there?’ Particularly SMG’s boss Alex (Ted Raimi) who is best known for his role as the bumbling second sidekick in Xena: Warrior Princess. Everyone at all important to the story just happens to be American (apart from the spirits) and everyone else is Japanese. The house SMG visits to care for the old lady is that of an American family who have just moved to Japan for the son’s job. His sister is also coincidentally in Japan and becomes a victim of the grudge. The person who discovers the original victims happens to be a visiting American professor. You get the idea.

And the pinnacle of the movie is undoubtedly the explanation provided of the grudge by a Japanese policeman. Doing his best impersonation of Jackie Chan in any of his English speaking movies, the detective explains that when a person dies in ‘extleme’ circumstances a grudge can be created. Throughout this speech SMG is channelling Cordelia Chase, always trying to look both serious and interested although it’s quite clear she has no idea what is going on.

And nor, in the end, do we.

  -- Brad Crammond