Caught a matinee of this today. What a fucking piece of shit. We got like 6 story lines going. 3 different time lines (2004, 2005, 2006) Absolutely fucking retarded. I didn't give a shit about any of the convoluted stories. None of which explain why the house is haunted. There was one cool scene involving a fall from a stair well. Other than that I was bored and angry. Another bullshit jump scare modern retarded attempt at horror.
I saw it today, and it's nowhere near as bad as people are saying. It's nothing special, fairly bland in parts, and doesn't really go anywhere, but it mostly kept my interest. It's also better than Grudge 2 or 3. It's baffling how people can be okay with snoozefests like Annabelle Comes Home, but this is "worst. movie. ever." (not referring to Natas' review above, I'm pretty sure he's as bored of that Annabelle shit as I am. But I've been seeing some scathing reviews for it.) The only thing I can think of is that its tonally different from the previous films. The opening scene takes place at the house from the original film, but after that, the action moves to a house in Pennsylvania and kind of starts from scratch. After the opening scene, we have a new Grudge house and different ghosts from the ones in the previous movies. So maybe people are just upset there's no Kayako or Toshio? Anyway, I'm not saying the movie is great. Or even good. But it's totally serviceable. It's pretty much the norm for Sony's mainstream theatrical horror (Possession Of Hannah Grace, Slender Man, etc), which isn't exactly a glowing endorsement but gives you a fair idea of what to expect. I wouldn't go in expecting a gorefest. There's some bloody stuff towards the end, but nothing too wild or consistent. Like the first two movies, this one retains the anthology structure. The framework is really the police storyline, featuring Andrea Riseborough, Demian Bichir, and to a lesser extent William Sadler. We also get two other stories surrounding the new Pennsylvania Grudge house. One features realtor couple John Cho and his pregnant wife Betty Gilpin. My favorite storyline of the movie involves Jacki Weaver, Lin Shaye, and Frankie Faison. So if nothing else, the casting is top notch. My biggest problem with the movie is that none of the three storylines offer any sort of pay-off whatsoever or weave together in any satisfying way. It doesn't go anywhere, there's no twist, no furthering of any mythology. It's just three very matter of fact stories about people who encountered this curse. Riseborough's character is trying to piece together a mystery, but by this point the movie has not only already shown us the outcome of what she is piecing together, but we have 3 movies worth of knowledge about this curse. So you're basically waiting for her to catch up. However, this is just as big a problem in Grudge 2 and especially 3. So yeah, I wouldn't rush out to the theater or anything, but I didn't find it as terrible as people are saying. I thought it was entirely watchable, and brief at only 90 mins, plus if you've already put yourself through 2 & 3 you've seen worse. Maybe it didn't seem so bad to me because I had just put myself through 2 & 3 as a refresher? If nothing else, you get to see Jacki Weaver and Lin Shaye share the screen, even if they deserve a better movie and a starring vehicle together.
So what did you end up thinking of this one? Is it as shit as everyone is saying? At this point I'm not sure it's even worth a download.
Sorry, forgot to give my review of the movie. It was fucking terrible. Bad characters, bad script, lame scares and just overall so damn boring, I was thinking of leaving half way through the movie. This crap makes the shitty 00:s remake a masterpiece in comparison. The gore is great, but not worth the pain of sitting through this stinker. I felt like I wanted to punch someone, when the credits rolled
I'm with Steel here 100 percent...... I usually find redeemable qualities in most flicks I catch..... I'm not a critic, but boring is boring and this piece of shit movie is exactly that. You can probably YouTube the coolest scene involving a fall down a stairwell.... Do not waste 2 hours of your life, even if it's a free download.
Riseborough, Sadler, Faison, Jacki Weaver, Bichir, Cho and Lin Shaye all in the cast is pretty amazing for this type of movie.
So I decided to give this a try despite the bad reviews and surprisingly had an ok time with it. Personally I think it needed a bit more work but I don't think it's as bad as others are making out (unlike Black Christmas which I couldn't get more than 5 minutes into before turning it off. Now that's a turd). So things I liked; I liked jumping around with the timelines as it added some intrigue. It mostly jumps further and further back, revealing more about different characters in the story and how things have unfolded to where they are now. One of my favorite bits was finding out how a car crash victim ended up where they did, but I think a lot of that had to do with not really expecting an explanation in the first place lol. Another effective scene was with the main cop character going to look through files in the basement of the cop shop. For the most part this was pretty tense. Now I didn't like things like the music for a start. The film starts with music that feels very out of place and then you get scenes with music that tried to make you feel a certain way but comes across really try hard. In reality they could have made things better with no score in some of these parts. I didn't care for the new ghosts. The classic "Grudge" sound has a reason in the original film, but here it doesn't and it's weird. Most of the scenes with these ghosts are just cheap jump scares that often ruin an otherwise tense scene. Their story ironically doesn't amount to anything too interesting. So yeah, it's still bad but not THAT bad. I wouldn't watch it again but had an ok time smoking a little weed and watching this alone lol.
Too bad we can't get more Japanese to American horror remakes like The Ring. That's still the best as far as I know. I'm fine with watching the Japanese originals though. There is something about the culture and setting which makes Japanese horror a bit more spooky than simply translating it to an American city or town.
I thought it was OK, the story was all over the place and performances seemed a little flat. But it had some fantastic effects, William Sadlers facial make up was excellent and it had some nice gore. I've seen a lot worse!
I plan on making a night of it...as soon as I get home from work, I'm ordering in and binging it...both the food and the series...I've been hungover at work all day...
Even though I don't see it on his IMDB, apparently Screaming Mad George did the special effects for NetFlix's Ju-On: Origins.
Aaaaaaarrrrggghhh!....I made the same mistake I made last night...getting wasted after my shift...oh well...pizza is on the way...I'll make it through at least 2 episodes...the pizza will keep me from being too hungover...ditto weed...
I've added list to my Netflix list. It's funny because I browsed past it quickly the other day and briefly thought it had something to do with The Ring. I knew I'd heard Ju-On somewhere, so finding out it's a Grudge inspired show was a nice surprise. Now to decide whether to watch it with subs or dubbed...
I just finished the show, and it's a mess. It started out promising, but the further in, the worse it gets. Too many characters, and the constant jumping back and forth in time, just makes it even more complicated. Sure there are flashbacks in the movies as well, but it still felt focused on ONE thing. It's only six 30 min episodes, but it so much shit going on, that when the credits rolled, I don't know what the fuck happened. Maybe it's because I stopped giving a fuck, around episode 5. It could be one of those shows/movies, that makes more sense, the second time you watch it. But I doubt I will give it another try. And there is basically no scares at all, except Spoiler for a creepy infant , just a few gory moments. Other than the curse, connected to the house, it just didn't feel like the same Ju-On universe, even though it's supposed to be a prequel. At least it felt more mature, like the classics in the genre, compared to most J-horror today, that seems to be made for stupid teens. I love the glory days of J-horror, back in the late 90:s to early 00:s. But after almost two decades of crap, I think it's time I give up on hoping for a return to that quality.
So I finished watching this last week and pretty much share the same view as you. It starts out decent enough but really relies on slow burn and horrible acts rather than much scary supernatural imagery. The creepy stuff is definitely in there but a lot of it fails to really get under your skin. There's some weird baby stuff in there that's pretty messed up but also pretty silly in that Troma kind of way. I thought I was doing a decent job following the story but I was definitely lost by the end. People were bursting into flames and I still don't know why! At the end of it all, it still doesn't really feel like a Grudge film/series, and that was disappointing.
