The Grudge
There is the spectre of a good film looming in the shadows of writer/director Nicholas Pesce’s The Grudge (2020) — one that walks a fine line between a serious drama and a traditional horror. However, much like the series’s mainstay ghost, it shows itself so infrequently that it is hard to recognize amongst the Americanized jumpscare-heavy schlock.
The most important thing to note about this latest addition to The Grudge saga is that it is incredibly bleak. Though the haunting is the de-facto A-plot, a large percentage of the runtime is focused on the tragic interior lives of characters that will be grotesquely dispatched when the story needs them to die. These luckless people are already dealing with enough struggles long before the eponymous Grudge starts spooking them.
In an actual plotline from this ostensible fright fest, a realtor couple — Peter and Nina Spencer (John Cho and Betty Gilpin) — learn that their unborn child is likely to be born with ALD, an entirely unexplained genetic disorder. Whatever ALD causes (seizures and trouble communicating, for those interested), it is enough to force the pregnant pair to seriously consider abortion. This leads to Gilpin, seemingly unaware she’s not in an episode of This is Us, openly weeping for the majority of her screen-time while the couple works together to come to an understanding about their future. Of course, none of this melodrama has any impact because the audience is introduced to the Spencers with a police report clearly stating that they both die due to spooky hi-jinx.
A similarly go-nowhere plot involves a husband considering assisted suicide for his wife of 50 years and the ethics of mental competency therein. Again, it is too dense a subject for Pesce to explore outside of a few cursory lines and leaves viewers feeling unfulfilled. At least this storyline features Jackie Weaver and modern b-horror staple Lin Shaye, entirely committing to camp performances that clash immensely with the film’s aesthetic but are enjoyable to watch nonetheless.
It would be easy to write off these tangents as unnecessary filler but to do so would leave the viewer with Andrea Riseborough’s truly dreadful lead character, Detective Muldoon. Like everyone else in this actively depressing movie, she is dealing with life-changing struggles unrelated to the haunted home. She is a single mother who, while grieving with the recent death of her spouse to cancer, moves to a new town in hopes of a fresh start. It is not hard to guess how that goes.
So, back to the potential for this film. The concept of a dour drama with horror elements is exciting territory and one that Pesce wants to explore. However, he has been tasked with creating the fourth film in a somewhat successful series known mainly for its now-dated reliance on jump scares and mildly creepy iconography; his attempt to merge these two vastly different entities create an uneven tone that sinks the entire film. The film radically shifts between scenes from formal drama with nary a supernatural moment to the cliche-ridden moments audience’s have seen in a hundred other horrors. At some points, especially scenes involving Muldoon, the characters will make numerous incomprehensible decisions that feel purposefully chosen to lead them into danger, setting themselves and the audience up for yet another quick scare. Rinse and repeat, it all becomes frustratingly plutonic before long.
The Grudge is not an enjoyable experience. Its reliance on the tropes causes the film to quickly become more tedious than terrifying while the knowledge that a majority of the characters involved have already met gruesome ends before they are introduced puts an excessive amount of melancholy into the proceedings. More than anything, it just feels a little too mean-spirited for its own good.
THE GRUDGE is released January 4th 2020
