Movie Review: 'The Grudge' 2020 Sequel or Remake or Just Not Good?

Is The Grudge a remake? A Sequel? A reimagining? Who cares? The Grudge is bad and that is the simple fact of this far too soon rehash of something that hasn’t even had the time to develop any notable fan nostalgia. The Japanese original made waves at the international box office in 2002 and was snapped up for a quickie, Americanized remake in 2004 starring Buffy the Vampire Slayer star Sarah Michele Geller.

That 2004 remake is one of the most forgotten blockbusters of all time. 2004’s The Grudge made nearly $200 million dollars on a minuscule budget and was followed by even more forgettable and far less successful sequels in 2006 and 2009. And that was the last time that anyone thought about The Grudge until now. So, why now? Why remake this forgotten franchise or reboot or whatever this is? Who knows, but it's probably just the cynical chase by movie studios to recycle anything slightly familiar to a fan base.

The Grudge 2020 stars Andrea Riseborough as Detective Muldoon. The young detective has just moved to a new town with her son and is barely moved in when she lands her first murder case. A body is discovered in a car on a remote road. The body has been there for some time and the decomposition, among other pieces of physical evidence, indicate something strange. The body is eventually linked to a home with a disturbing history.

In 2004, a young mother returned home from a trip to Japan. For reasons beyond comprehension, the mother went on to drown her pre-teen daughter and stab her husband to death before taking her own life. Not long after, the realtor selling their home, Peter Spencer (John Cho), ends up at the home and… and it would require a spoiler to explain what happens with him and his wife, played by GLOW star Betty Gilpin.

The detective who investigated the murdering mom’s case, played by beloved character actor William Sadler, ended up losing his mind and becoming obsessed with the murder which he attributed to supernatural forces. His partner, played by Academy Award nominee Demian Bechir, eventually has to have Sadler committed because his obsession consumed him. Bechir is now the partner of Detective Muldoon and the story of the cursed murder house is coming full circle.

I have brought a great deal more shape and substance to this story than the movie itself which is more along the line of horror snap chat account. Writer-Director Nicolas Pesce has apparently been strongly influenced Tik-Tok accounts or horror snap-chats, which I am assuming are a thing, because he directs every moment of The Grudge 2020 as if each scene were a contained moment that includes ominous music and the equivalent of someone jumping out of the shadows and yelling ‘Boo!’

The Grudge 2020 has no narrative momentum, the pace is glacial aside from the repeated scenes of ‘Boo’ which do not add up to a story being told. The Grudge 2020 clumsily lumbers between three different time frames, cycling through nearly a dozen essential and inessential characters on the way to an ending that we know isn’t going to be an ending. It is frankly insulting at this point that a director doesn’t respect us enough to acknowledge in some way that we know there will be a sequel and the ‘happy ending’ is going to be a fake out.

The makers of The Grudge 2020 might accuse me of spoiling the movie with that revelation but the movie is well curdled on its own. Hollywood doesn’t make these movies not to make a sequel. Thus, it falls to clever and innovative filmmakers to make these movies in a way that is artful and surprising and the makers of The Grudge, 2020 appear content not to innovate at all. They deliver the same fake out ending that everyone knows is coming and it’s not because the movie requires this story to continue.

The Grudge 2020 is artless and insultingly corporate. The movie is built to cater to the lowest common denominator of modern horror movie making. You can sense the gears turning at a corporate board meeting where someone who cares nothing about the story being told or the craftsmanship of a really good scare, boils the movie down to a series of ‘Boo’ scenes and a fake out sequel tease.

Fans of the original American remake of The Grudge (2004) will not find much of what they enjoyed about that movie. Then again, that movie was only a photo-copied version of the Japanese original, glossed with the appearance of star Sarah Michele Geller so perhaps that isn’t the standard of excellence anything needs to match. That said, The Grudge ‘04 wasn’t an incomprehensible mess. It may not be a great movie, but it is far better than this corporatized, cynical, by the numbers sequel/remake/reboot… whatever The Grudge 2020 is supposed to be.