There have been a lot of over-hyped, "best horror movie EVER" horror movies over the last few years, from Darkness Falls to The Blair Witch Project to Mutant Man.  The Grudge falls into that category.  I should've been suspicious from the get-go because it's a remake of a Japanese movie that doesn't have one Godzilla attack or tentacle rape scene anywhere in the entire movie.  Instead, the movie tries to be a ghost movie about Japanese ghosts in a house in Tokyo.  The plot is weak (if you can even find it), but plot isn't really important for a horror movie.  The only thing that really matters is a lot of good gore, a lot of wacky ghost-type spooky shit, and creepy-jumpy stuff.  The only way this movie would be scary is if you're afraid of Japanese people. Seriously, the scariest movie out right now would have to be Team America, because puppets scare the fucking piss out of me.

The good thing is that I had a free ticket, which my ex-girlfriend won from a radio station.  So we go there early as fuck because she's insane.  We go into the theater about a half hour early, and it's fucking packed.  There's also the Y100 Street Squad (possibly "Of Justice", I'm not sure) up at the front of the theater asking Buffy the Vampire Slayer trivia questions for a chance to win free shit.  "Shit" being T-shirts and emo CDs.  Hooray.  Being that I've never seen Buffy the Vampire Slayer before, I couldn't answer anything.  That's okay because I wouldn't wear the T-shirt and I don't like Coheed and Cambria.  Whatever.  So then finally the previews start. There's a movie coming out called Boogeyman, and the people that made it fucked up because it looks serious, not jam-packed with hilarity as you'd expect from a movie called Boogeyman.  Crap.

The movie opens up with Bill Pullman standing on a balcony.  His wife says some stupid shit to him, and then Bill very radly flips over the balcony and kills himself.  You can forget about this for the next hour because they don't mention it again for a while.  One plus for the movie, his legs are pointed in different directions on the pavement.  Hi-larious.

After the opening credits, This Japanese chick named Yoko (yes, as in Ono) goes into some creepy-ass house where this crazy old lady is just sleeping on the floor and mumbling and whatnot.  Yoko goes upstairs, chittering away on the phone like all Asian people - you know, that noise they make that sounds more like a bird on speed than actual language - and she hears footsteps and thumping.  Dun-dun-dunnnn.  She starts  checking shit out, following the noise, and goes into the attic with only a lighter and a prayer.  Then she turns around and this fucked up girl with all-white eyes makes this "kuhkuhkkukkhkukhkuhk" noise and sucks Yoko into the attic, screaming like... well, like a Japanese girl I guess.  Yeah.

Then we cut to some dude trying to sneak out of Karen's (Sarah Michelle Gellar) bed.  Probably because he's a vampire and doesn't want her to kill him.  Or maybe he just got her pregnant, I'm not sure.  It turns out that these two are foreign exchange students in Tokyo.  Yay, Tokyo!

They look at a cemetery for a while and go to school. Karen works at a care center, which is (wait for it....) where Yoko worked when she was a non-corpse.  Since Yoko is dead and didn't show up for work, her douche-bag boss, Alex, tells Karen that she gets to go to the house and take care of the old lady.  On her way there, she asks a Japanese woman for directions.  The Japanese woman hides her kid behind her, away from Karen.  There isn't much point in that except to show us that Japanese people think us white devils want to eat their kids.  And they're right.  Their kids are delicious.

Karen goes into the house, where conveniently no one is home.  Oh, except for the old lady.  I think her name's Emma.  I don't remember, but that's her name now.  I am all-powerful.  Yeah, so Emma's clawing at the door to her room, and Karen helps her back onto her floor mattress.  Emma doesn't say anything, even when Karen is giving her a sponge-bath and changing her old-lady nighty.  Karen hears noises upstairs and goes to check it out.  In the room where Yoko's shit got ruined, the closet was all taped up.  Who taped it up?  No one apparently.  Touché, The Grudge.  Your crappy continuity problems have foiled my brain once again.  She opens the closet, and guess what's in there.  Seriously, guess.  If you said "a cat," you'd be right.  There's also a journal in there.  Karen picks up a journal, and then notices that there's a banged-up creepy Japanese kid in there, holding the cat.  I guess she couldn't see the kid right away because of her giant round eyes.

Put them time-travellin' hats on, 'cause it's flashback time.  If I may editorialize here for a moment, flashbacks are fucking stupid.  I hate them.  There is rarely an excuse for a flashback in any movie, and this shitty movie is chock-full of them.  Okay, so we go back to when a man, his not-really-attractive wife, and his mother (crotchety old Emma) are buying the house. Some ridiculously hyper crazy Japanese realtor is showing them around.  They, of course, see one room and start creaming their pants over how kickass the house is. Yeah.  Also, the man's sister, who also conveniently works in Tokyo, is there too checking out the house. Emma wandered from the tour, so Susan (that's the sister) goes upstairs to find her.  Emma's in the Yoko-killing room staring at the ceiling.  Apparently, this is where Emma loses her mind, stops talking, and spends the remainder of the movie staring into space.  While the family is on old lady patrol, the crazy realtor goes into the bathroom, notices that the bathtub is full, and goes to unclog it.  Horror movie cliche time, part two: what happens here?  If you said a corpse-hand grabs him, you'd be right.  Now ram your head into something as congratulations for a job well done.  Realtor-guy pulls his hand away, and the man (I wish I could remember his name, but he's a total douche so it doesn't matter) comes into the bathroom, without knocking, and tells the realtor that the place is perfect.  Forgetting about the movie making a point that all realtors are lying scumbags that don't care about anything other than selling a house, why didn't douche-bag knock on the door?  The realtor could have been taking a shit or masturbating or some weird combination of the two.  I mean, it's Japan and he's Japanese, so it's very possible that he'd be in there looking at naked anime drawings of Hello Kitty stuffed with tentacles in every orifice while he's jerking off with one hand and wiping his feces all over his face with the other.  Could you imagine walking in on something like that?  Fuck, if I ever go to Tokyo, I'm pounding on every bathroom door I find before going inside.

Back to Karen.  She calls Alex and tells him to come over immediately.  Oh yeah, it's nighttime now.  Karen looks up and sees the creepy kid staring down at her.  She says a bunch of Japanese shit to him, and he says his name is Toshiri (or some such shit, I don't know).  Then the phone rings.  It's Susan calling to check up on Emma.  Karen doesn't answer it because the cordless phone is missing.  Then she looks down and finds a crumpled and tattered picture of Toshiri and his parents, but the mother's face has been ripped out of the picture.  Karen hears Emma making old lady whiny noises and goes to check on her.  Emma's staring at the ceiling again, whimpering, and she finally says "I just want her to leave me alone."  Then Karen starts paying attention to the shadow growing out of the ceiling.  It's the same ghost bitch that killed Yoko.  The ghost bitch says, "Kuhkuhkuhkhkkkhuhkkkhuhkhkkkuhkuhkuhkk" again and Karen screams.

Are you ready for another flashback?  You'd goddamn well better be, because here's one more.  The wife, Mrs. Douche-Bag, is lounging on the couch with a bowl of wacky Japanese soup being a lazy-ass freeloader.  Then, the pitter-patter of tiny feet runs by, knocks over her soup and takes off.  Naturally she blames Emma because she's old.  Then she sees footprints going upstairs.  She starts to walk up, saying "Hello?" like a retard, and she sees the black cat.  Then she sees tiny corpse hands pick up the cat and go farther upstairs.  She goes into the bedroom and sees Toshiri with the cat.  She starts asking the usual questions (you know, like "Who are you?", "What are you doing here?", "Does this shirt make me look fat?", etc.)  Then the kid opens his mouth really wide and makes a loud cat noise.  That's actually pretty creepy, I'll give the movie that.  Maybe it's just because I'm terrified of Japanese kids that make cat noises for no apparent reason at all.  Then we hear "kuhkukuhkuhkuhkuhkkkhuuuhkkkhuhuhkhuhkuhk" and the shadow ghost bitch envelopes her.  Then the husband comes home.  Douche-bag sees the mess in the living room and goes upstairs to investigate.  The wife is on the bed struggling to breathe, and then the shadow ghost bitch kills him.  Oh, and she says, "Kuhkuhkuhkuhkhuhkkkhuhkhhuuuhkhkhuk" again.  They're both dead.  That's a good thing because I hate them.

Back to the present.  Alex comes into the house. Finally. Emma's a corpse now lying in her bed.  Alex looks around at the mess, and then sees Karen cowering in the corner and staring at the ceiling.  The cops come to take his statement, and he says that Yoko, the usual case worker, has been missing for a day as well and her bike is still outside.  You should see her bike, too.  If she was in grade school, kids would throw food at her constantly for having suck a crappy fucking bike.  The cops go upstairs to investigate.  The main detective sees flies all over the place and he and his buddy go into the attic.  I know what you're thinking.  They're corpses-in-progress too. Ha ha ha NO.  WRONG.  I guess that since they have flashlights, the shadow ghost bitch doesn't get them. Only girls named Yoko with lighters.  Then they find the douche-bag couple in the corner, and they look like every corpse in The Ring (which is what this movie is shamelessly trying to emulate).  There's also someone's jaw on the floor.  It was torn off and left there in a bloody mess.  That's some good fucking gore right there.

Another sort-of flashback, to only a few hours prior!  Cut to Susan.  She's at work.  She's also the only person in the entire fucking high-rise building except for one awkward security guy.  She's making her "I'm checking up on mom" phone call and then starts to leave the office.  As she walks down the hallway, she hears a faint "kuhkuhkuhkuhkkkhuhhuuukkhhhk." Then it gets louder.  She yells "Hello?" but she only hears the noise getting louder.  So she runs into the staircase instead of the elevator.  She looks up and hears "kuhkuhkuhkuhkuhkuhkkkhuhuuuuhkhkhuk" and sees the lights going out floor by floor.  Then she looks down and sees someone crawling up the steps toward her.  She runs out the door, a corpse-hand grabs her bag, but she gets away.  She finds the security guy, and I am not fucking joking at all when I say this guy is the dorkiest, most awkward motherfucker in that entire wacky country.  He puts on his hat and goes inspecting.  Susan watches from the security video feed.  He goes into the staircase, checks it out for a minute, and she watches him walk back down the hallway because he didn't see anything.  Then, still watching the video (and now REALLY ripping off The Ring), the video starts to get grainy and then the shadow ghost bitch rises from a crack under the staircase door and starts walking towards the camera.  Oh, and she also says "Kuhkuhkuhkuhkuhkkkhuuuhkhkhuhkhuhk."  Susan bolts, hops into a cab like a pussy, and goes home.

She gets into her building and hops up the elevator.  She thinks she's safe, but oh no, every time se passes a floor, Toshiri's there, buck fucking naked by the way, looking at her.  Seriously, the kid's fucking naked.  Full frontal child corpse porn.  It's like pedophilia and necrophilia at the same mind-boggling time.

Susan finally gets to her apartment and locks the door. Then the Douche-Bag calls.  If you've been paying attention, yes, he's very dead at this point.  He says he's downstairs so she buzzes him up.  Immediately, he rings her doorbell.  "But, that's... that's IMPOSSIBLE" you might say.  But Susan looks out her peephole, still on the phone with her douche-bag brother, and he's out there with his cell phone making "What the fuck?" gestures.  She opens the door and surprise, surprise, no one's there.  Then her phone says, "kuhkuhkuhkuhkuhkuuukhkhhkkukhkukhkkuhk" and she flips out, slams the door, chain-locks it (which will stop fucking anything), and jumps under her covers and cries.  Being a woman, that's the only thing she could think of doing.  Women; always crying instead of kicking ass.  Then Susan looks at her bag, and there's still a corpse-finger stuck to it.  Then she looks at her bed, and there's something under there coming towards her.  She lifts the covers, and it's shadow ghost bitch screaming her "kuhkuhk" noise.  Then, instead of some hot lesbo action, Susan gets pulled into her bed, screaming and crying the whole time, and disappears.

Back to Karen.  She's in the hospital.  She wakes up, and her boyfriend (whose name I also forget) is there watching over her.  Aw, how sweet.  She says some shit about not remembering much to him, and then the detective comes in.  I remember his name, but I'm not going to embarrass myself by trying to spell it.  He says they never found the boy, she says that "The whole time I was in that house I felt like something was wrong.  I'm a blubbering vagina."  She also mentions that the boy's name was Toshiri.  This freaks out the detective and he leaves.  In the hallway, his partner says "They were the first family to live there since the 'incident' three years ago."  Also, that sentence is in subtitle form to be sure that you know the makers of this movie hate you and want you to hate them back.

Later on, Karen goes investigating this house.  She finds out that a crazy guy killed his wife and son there (thus spawning the grudge, or whatever).  There's also an article on how Bill Pullman, college professor extraordinaire, killed himself the next day.  No, it doesn't really make sense why the paper would know about these things being linked, but I'll get into that later.  So Karen goes to Pullman's apartment to talk to his wife.  When she gets there, his wife looks like a whore and cries constantly.  It was three years ago.  Let it go.  Karen goes through pictures of him and his wife, and in every picture after a certain point, there's the same Japanese woman in the background.  I think Karen just imagines this because all Asian people look the same to her, that racist bitch.

Now we go to Alex.  He's leaving his care center or whatever, and believe me when I say that this is the coolest part of the movie, and he sees a woman with her head down kind of walking like a zombie down these stairs.  He realizes it's Yoko, and goes to run after her.  Then he slips and falls, and the entire movie theater started laughing.  See?  It's not just me.  Everyone hates him.  He examines the liquid and it's blood.  Wow.  So he calls out to Yoko again, and she turns around.  He just screams like a bitch and then we see Yoko.  SHE HAS NO JAW AND HER GIANT MUTANT CORPSE-TONGUE ROLLS OUT OF THE HOLE IN HER NECK!!!!  It fucking rules so much ass it's unbelievable.  The entire movie should've been that part only two hours long.

Karen then goes to see the detective.  He's on the roof of some building and tells this sob story about how three of his cop buddies investigated the original murders and that two died and one disappeared.  Then he tells the whole long ancient Japanese legend of the grudge which I won't repeat here because I'm sure everyone reading this now has seen the commercial for the movie about 9 billion times just like I have.  He says the same thing about the grudge only he goes into much greater, more excruciating detail and the whole thing sounds like a backwards fortune cookie.

Yet another fucking flashback.  Bill Pullman's at his locker, and he keeps getting love letters from some crazy Japanese woman (the woman in the pictures, duh), but he doesn't know who she is.  So he goes to the house. He sees Toshiri outside, and goes in to help him out.  Toshiri of course says nothing.  Bill Pullman calls his wife while looking out the window, and Toshiri opens his mouth really wide again and makes that damned cat noise again.

In the present. the detective goes to the house with gasoline and tries to burn it down.  Yeah, he's dead now.

Karen gets home, and realizes that her boyfriend found all of her research on the house and went there to find her.  So, yeah, he's pretty much fucked.  She goes to save him or something, I don't know.

The boyfriend is in the house, with no lights on of course, and wanders around.  He goes into the bathroom, sees Toshiri drowning in the tub, goes to save him, and Toshiri's corpse shoves the boyfriend's head in the tub to drown him.  Later on, Karen walks in to find her dude, and then she starts psychically seeing the flashback of Bill Pullman in the house snooping around.  He finds all these pictures of the woman with her face cut out of them and tacked onto the closet door.  Also, he finds her journal, which is basically her psychotically writing about how she loves Bill Pullman.  Oh, shit, and I just remembered that his name is Peter.  Ha ha...  Peter. Then he opens the closet door and the woman's corpse falls out.  Then Karen sees the woman's husband finding the journal flipping out, and killing them both.  Then I think he hangs himself or something.  I forget.  I wasn't paying too much attention at this point.

Karen finally snaps out of it, and finds her dude.  He can't breathe and is pretty much dead, but then the shadow ghost bitch starts crawling down the steps, very Ring-like, and Karen pours the gas, lights the lighter, and starts a fire right before shadow ghost bitch eats her face.

We cut to a hospital, and the dude's corpse is there. Karen comes out of one room, all fucked up from burn wounds, and she goes into the room to see her dead dude.  The doctor asks the cop what happened and how she survived, and he said they arrived in time to save her and, of course, the house.  Karen goes into the room alone, then shadow ghost bitch pops up behind her, screams "kuhkuhkuhkuhkkuuuhhkuhk," and then the movie ends.  Everyone in the theater as they were walking out said something to the effect of "Man, that shit was fucking stupid."

Seriously, it was so full of holes.  How did reporters and cops know that Peter was linked to the house?  Why was there no plot?  If someone is murdered and their angry spirit sticks around to kill people, why isn't half of Japan dead from grudges?  Tokyo's big.  I'm sure lots of people there die in terror, not just the woman and her damned cat-screaming kid.  Also, wouldn't you think that the people that got killed by shadow ghost bitch died terrified and angry?  Wouldn't they be starting new grudges?  Fuck.  Don't watch this shit.  It was stupid. Especially the part when Karen's in the shower and a fist pops out of her head.  What the fuck is that shit? Also, why did Toshiri make cat noises?  Yeah, it was creepy and all, but why the fuck did he sound like a cat? Where did that come from?

At least there was a zombie with no jaw and a giant tongue hanging out of it.  That was totally sweet, even if it made no sense