In Defense of The Grudge (2020) {Feature}

A man drives down the road with his friend in the car. He is a tired detective, someone who holds onto little details of his heritage from the photos that litter his glove box. He is trying to tell his friend, also a detective (William Sadler), that this friend can no longer go by a house where a murder has taken place. His friend pulls out a pistol and suddenly shoots himself in the face. The man looks down at him, pain in his eyes. He asks him, “Why did you do it?” The answer is beyond him.

When it debuted in early 2020, Nicholas Pesce’s The Grudge was raked over the coals by critics and audiences alike. A follow up to Pesce’s better received Piercing and The Eyes of My Mother, The Grudge, a studio horror film dropped at the beginning of January, seemed like a step back. When I saw the trailer and the reception, I would have guessed this as well. But sometimes an avid horror film watcher finds a strange avenue for their viewing day to go down and, for no reason at all, I found myself watching The Grudge. What I found was a movie of great soul, one that should not be disregarded in the annals of modern horror.

What works about Pecse’s film is best accentuated in that horrifying scene above. The man is Goodman, and the eyes belong to the actor Demian Bichir. The scene is simple enough. It is not special, or particularly complex (dramatically or technically), but that lack of complexity works to its advantage. It is well trodden ground, but it asks you to look towards the details that make the scene special. Pesce, coming off the detail-oriented, “bottle-film,” that was Piercing, takes full advantage of these. 

First, there is the way the film leans into the actor’s faces. While much of modern horror opts for a theme driven, calculated camera, The Grudge opts to let most of the moments play to the actors. The outsized screaming of, “I am your mother!,” is phenomenal, but something about the deep silence of a worn actor’s eyes that reaches towards the ephemeral. Much like the 2002 original, Ju On: The Grudge, this is a movie of deliberate reaction shots. That film’s director, Takashi Shimizu, seemed to realize that sometimes holding on an actor’s face can be like holding the audience’s hand to a stove. In that film’s best moment, an early scene where a young man (Kanji Tsuda) encounters a vengeful spirit (Yuya Ozeki), the closeups trade in a horrible length. There is nothing sadder, scarier, or more seering than the human face. 
​
It helps Pesce that whatever they spent on this movie, probably went mostly to the stellar cast that he has collected. Lin Shaye, John Cho, Betty Gilpin, Jackie Weaver, Andrea Riseborough, and of course Demian Bichir, are all stellar performers who can’t help to soak up the camera in their eyes. In the aforementioned scene, most of the runtime is lent to the deep, almost mystified sadness of Bichir’s eyes. I don’t need a monologue about how the years have destroyed his family or eaten away at him, his eyes will do all of it. Similarly, Riseborough (whose Detective Muldoon anchors the film), seems stuck in a state of heightened exasperation. 

Also exasperated is the cinematography. Shot by Zack Galler on anamorphic lenses, the framing calls attention to the different distortions that the lens choice gives. In an early scene where Bichir and Riseborough drive to a crime scene, the anamorphic lenses distort the edges of the car and make for a woozy feeling. Both characters, caught in the deadly traps of trauma or grief, are disconnected. Goodman smokes, but in a way that seems like coping. Muldoon dissociates on the window much the same. All of this is accentuated by the color palette. The choice is interesting to say the least. This is a movie of deep contrast, full of murky blacks and acidic yellows. The skin tones are far from normal. Everything takes on the amber hue of something like Hereditary. It feels deliberate though. Piercing is a film of sleek, crystal-clear color. The Grudge looks like the rotted flesh of its spectre was rubbed against the frame.

Thematically, that works out. When comparing The Grudge to its ancestor Ju On, it becomes obvious that these are movies about the inescapable and the mundane. They both start simply enough with the approximately the same supertitle: “Ju:On, When a soul dies in anger or sadness…” This explicitly suggests the reverberation of a traumatic event that is inescapable. These are movies about how anyone, anywhere, can be befallen by tragedy. The color of the film suggests the festering infection that is reality, something that is further shown by the structural choices that The Grudge chooses to make. 

Thematically, that works out. When comparing The Grudge to its ancestor Ju On, it becomes obvious that these are movies about the inescapable and the mundane. They both start simply enough with the approximately the same supertitle: “Ju:On, When a soul dies in anger or sadness…” This explicitly suggests the reverberation of a traumatic event that is inescapable. These are movies about how anyone, anywhere, can be befallen by tragedy. The color of the film suggests the festering infection that is reality, something that is further shown by the structural choices that The Grudge chooses to make. 
​
When watching Ju On: The Grudge, something that becomes obvious is the episodic nature of the storytelling. Less than a minute into the film, a supertitle reading: “RIKA,” appears. This immediately connotes the storytelling style that the film will utilize (Quick note: Pesce utilized this similar structure in The Eyes of My Mother). As the film goes on, it sends us back and forward through time. This structure does two things. First, it robs the film of almost any pretense. For how great all the reach towards, “elevated,” horror has become it has produced some lofty works to say the least. Ju On, and by extension The Grudge, do not feel lofty at all. By being simple stories, they exist simply to scare the audience. As mentioned above, the lack of substance could be a flaw. Instead, it leaves more room to be filled up by the craft. Secondly, this episodic structure works towards the larger theme: That this horror is not all that special. It is simply something caused by evil in the world that wrecks the lives of those involved. Both films even have a decent thesis on where that evil comes from. 

Ju On definitely has something to say about the treatment of the elderly, children, and the life of young people in early 2000s Japan, but it never comes out and says it specifically. The Grudge aims to do the same for police, the ethics of abortion, and (in true Grudge fashion) the treatment of the elderly. Like all story elements in these films though, these are not there to upstage the horror the way that mental illness can in the works of Ari Aster. They simply exist alongside it, all consuming evils that have smoothed themselves into the fabric of what we find normal. 

If there is a present flaw, it is that while this route cuts a lot of the more tiresome weight out of the film, touching these issues and hoping that the actors and craft make up for the vacuum is a big check that The Grudge can’t quite cash. Sure, the surprisingly layered sound design, shot choices, and Betty Gilpin/John Cho conjuring subtext out of thin air can take you a long way...but they can’t fix some of the strange (maybe problematic, but the actors have too much empathy) paths that the story decides to take. The Gilpin/Cho story falls for this especially, with their characters being consumed by whether or not they should abort a child that may be born with an illness. What’s good about the storyline is that it becomes much more about the individual emotions of Gilpin/Cho’s characters, reaching an emotional catharsis that is then ripped away, what’s not so good is leaving all that heavy political messaging lying out in the open to be interpreted however. 

​All roads lead back to the pain in Bichir’s eyes though. As he watches his friend bleed in his lap, he asks, “Why?” The text of the film, the depth of his eyes, the anamorphic warp, and the deeply wrong colors all answer it. The world had a grudge out for him and everyone else. He can try to drown it out with cigarette smoke, just like Muldoon will drown it out with her son and her work. It does not work though. The endgame is where his partner, and eventually Muldoon (even after a fake out happy ending) will end up. In the hands of the Grudge, unable to escape.

Follow HorrOrigins Social Media

---

Author

​Stephen Tronicek is a director/screenwriter focused on psychological horror and comedy. He grew up and is based in St. Louis. Stephen discovered film at a young age and became a professional film critic in his junior year of high school. This eventually led him to write screenplays and make short films. His horror screenplay, "Pieces" was a quarter-finalist in the Launch Million Dollar Screenplay Competition. Focuses include character-driven stories, violence as an extension of the psyche and seeing how much emotionally resonant story material you can get away with if you stick to the theme.