Meanwhile, Eason looks over some footage of an investigator being interviewed about the Saeki house. We've seen this before. Kayako makes an appearance in the background of the video, makes some death rattle noises, etc. *roll eyes* He decides to go back the house and Aubrey decides to tag along.
Jump back to the Chicago apartment. Some thumping noises awaken Jake and he pokes his head outside to see the hooded figure going downstairs. Being the white guy that he is, he must investigate. Allison digs through the trash and retrieves a bunch of old newspaper. She uses it to, you guessed it, cover all her windows. This is the Izumi story from J:TG remade if you didn't already recognize it.
The husband seems suspicious of his wife, despite having just married her. I think Takeo's spirit is supposed to be possessing him but since when has any of the curse been about the dead people's spirits possessing other people to this extent? The vengeful ghosts from the grudge destroy people. Kayako's/Toshio's/Takeo's consciences aren't supposed to be floating around. I think that nuance has been forgotten at this point.
So the blonde, whose name is Vanessa, and Allison get called to the office since Miyuki has gone missing. Allison yells at her and takes off while the counselor leaves Vanessa alone in the room to chase after her. She dicks around for a while, playing with the pens and the desk lamp before it unplugs itself. She gets under the table to plug it back in when Toshio scampers past, startling her. We get the Mizuho scene from Ju-on [2000]. Vanessa takes off and ends up in a phone booth where she tries calling Miyuki. Apparently Kayako stole her phone 'cause she answers. Toshio grabs her knees and Kayako's hair comes down and wraps her in a bad CGI effect. The grudge now takes people in broad daylight. Where's the horror? I ain't feelin' it.
Cut to Eason and Aubrey. He goes in and finds Kayako's diary, discovering that her mother was an exorcist who removed evil spirits from people and fed them to her daughter, Kayako. I don't know what that has to do with anything, Kayako seemed like a normal housewife before the murder. They go back to Eason's apartment and he heads into a darkroom to develop some photographs. Kayako pulls a Sadako and takes him down. Rather than the death rattle noise, she makes a squawk/squeal noise when she does so, as if to underline how far this rotten apple has rolled from the tree.
The curse behaves differently in these American remakes. In the Japanese films it haunts and then kills its victims. In the American movies it haunts and follows and stalks, not coincidentally giving the director plenty of opportunities to jump scare us, before killing them. Guess which approach is superior.
Cut back to Chicago. The daughter randomly shows off a cheerleader outfit to her friend who randomly drinks a jug of milk before regurgitating it back into the jug. AWKWARD. Fortunately, Daughter gets a call from Jake, allowing her to get the fuck out of that situation. Mom and Dad have been fighting. Ruh-roh. The milk drinking friend dies in a throw-away scene. The next morning we come to the scene from the beginning of the movie. The husband has made a full transformation into his abusive self. Meanwhile, the wife is seen leaning against the wall adjacent to Allison's room. It almost seems like Kayako's spirit got her and Takeo's spirit got him. That's not how the grudge did its work back in the day....
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| Yeah, that's kinda my face when I found this movie. |
Cut back to Allison returning to the counselor's office. The counselor assures her that nothing was at that house. She went there with the cops and they found nothing! YAY!! \(^o^)/
wait- you what?! (⊙Д⊙) Then we get this...
Cut to Aubrey on a bus heading to Kayako's mother. There's an old man playing peek-a-boo with an invisible kid. It looks like they actually got the wheelchair guy from J:TG to reprise his small role just for this reused bit. She finds the mother cowering in the corner of a dilapidated house in the countryside. For some reason she speaks English when the two nurses in the modern Tokyo hospital did not. Aubrey demands that she do something about Kayako since she "made her what she is". Wait. If the childhood exorcisms made her what she is, where does Takeo fit into this? Kayako's obsession with Kobayashi, the school teacher, and her subsequent murder is what started all this right? Now it sounds like even if Kayako had died a normal death she would have left an onryou. Shimizu, you're making less and less sense. Fortunately, the mother denies that the exorcisms did this. *phew* Continuity is maintained. Then the mom dies. (- -__;;) Aubrey takes off without phoning the police or anything. She returns to the house and demands to know what it wants.
Meanwhile, Jake and Daughter (Lacey) return home to find the house in shambles. Jake finds his dead father in the kitchen and Lacey drowned in the bathtub. Then he sees a vision of his mother being pulled under the water by Toshio. None of this frightening by the way. We're just watching the events now. There's no cinematography at all here.
Aubrey walks into a wormhole view back in time to when Takeo found his wife's records of her infidelity. Somehow she takes Kayako's place as Takeo's ghost kills her again.
Jake finds Allison crying in the hallway under her hoodie.
Verdict: Shitty movie. Yeah.. that's it.
