Audrey goes to visit her sister Karen in a Tokyo hospital to find out what happened to her, but soon after she arrives, Karen mysteriously dies. Now Audrey has to start digging to find the truth to what really happened to her sister. Also involved is a family from Chicago, three schoolgirls from Tokyo's International High School and a photojournalist from Hong Kong that all seems to be connected by the curse.
I guess horror and suspense fled the field when the production for The Grudge 2 began, because they were absolutely nowhere to be found within the movie. It would've been understandable if a big company had released this film only with the intention to make some green and would've had someone who had just been making romantic comedies or something like that before to helm it. But that is not the case now is it? What is really sad is that this movie was released by Ghost House Pictures that has Sam Raimi's name on it and was infact helmed by Japanese horror master Takashi Shimizu. Still, it turned out like your worst nightmare and that's not in the good sense.
So who's this horrible movie for then? Well, I guess that if I had been 12 years old or something, I probably would have found it somewhat enjoyable as well as scary, so I guess that means that it's aimed at all the teenagers out there with their heads in the air. So if you're one of those, well enjoy, but if your not you better just stick to the first four Japanese films (two being theatrical, two being made for tv.) What is the worst thing here is that there's evidence, in the form of most of the Japanese films that he have made, that Shimizu is a really talented guy, so it's quite sad to see his name on something like this.. it sure makes one lose faith.
 
The Grudge 2 really doesn't offer anything new and while we get sort of a better understanding to the grudges and some background knowledge of it all, it was still not enough to keep an interest up. I hated how the film started out with some clueless girls that visits a place where a woman was murdered, and obviously something "scary" happens there. Watching the very intro itself was like getting a kick in the balls, it had a foul taste to it and it felt very unlikely that the movie would turn around later on, and no, it didn't either.
The sequel picks up where the first film left off with Sarah Michelle Gellar being in a hospital in Tokyo and Gellar’s sister, Amber Tamblyn, goes there to visit her. It doesn't take long before the vampire slayer dies and her sister obviously needs to know what caused her death and tries to figure out what happened in the last film. At the same time, there's a second story going on, but you'll have to watch the film to find out about that yourself because I'm getting tired of describing it, maybe because I feel that I truly wasted some time watching the film and do not want to waste any more if possible.
Gotta mention Edison Chen though, who's a great actor and it was sad to see him in this film. He does a good job with his character, but the script for this film is so poor and just keeps repeating the ideas from the first film and really has nothing new to show for. Shimizu is a great director though and the film looks very sharp, unfortunately there's a lot of CGI work put into it which brings it down a bit, but what really brings it down is the somewhat slow-moving boring story and how the whole thing have been executed. The scares were all utterly predictable - you could see them coming from miles away and when they hit, they accomplished nothing decent whatsoever.
Just stick with the Japanese Ju-on films because watching this is just as amusing as getting poked with a stick. It might look nice on the outside, but on the inside there's not too much happening. I really hope Shimizu goes back to Japan and starts making those awesome flicks again, because this is just not working at all.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2006
DIRECTOR: Takashi Shimizu
WRITING CREDITS: Stephen Susco, Takashi Shimizu
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Amber Tamblyn, Edison Chen, Sarah Michelle Gellar
COUNTRY: USA
RUNTIME: 102 min
RATING: 2/10
Grudge 2, The Website/IMDB Click here
Grudge 2, The Trailer Click here
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