SYNOPSIS

This movie picks up right where the first left off. Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) is in the hospital after she tried to burn down the super-haunted Japanese house whose ghostly residents stalk all who dare enter. Her sister Aubrey (Amber Tamblyn) flies out to Japan at her ailing mother’s request that she bring Karen home, even though the siblings haven’t spoken in years. Aubrey finds her sister strapped to a hospital bed and desperate to escape, so desperate in fact that she quickly breaks free and makes a getaway. Now Aubrey must find out what it was her sister knew.

The curse also spreads to a few other groups. An out-of-the-social-loop newcomer Allison (Arielle Kebbel) follows two popular girls at her international school into the house. Naturally, the trio is stuck with a creepy fan that won’t leave them alone. Also, there’s a young boy named Jake whose father has just re-married after the death of his mom. His neighbors have started acting more and more strange, and Jake inexplicably finds himself being haunted by the grudge, as well.

Review by
STEVEN HARRELL

So, to be honest, scary movies aren’t exactly my favorite. Follow my logic: if the movie isn’t scary then it’s not any good and a waste of time. If the movie is scary, then I think about it late at night when the wind picks up and blows a tree branch against my window and the air conditioner turns on and I freak out and hide under the covers like a ten-year-old girl. “The Grudge 2,” fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, isn’t too scary, but it’s not exactly a Disney adventure either.

The main thing that didn’t really work for me was the way that the curse seemed to go into overdrive, haunting people never went into the house. I understand it’s a horror flick and that not everything is going to make total logical sense. But if there is a rule established that only people who go in the house get haunted, I don’t think that rule should be broken for 70 percent of the running time -- even if the house did catch on fire at the end of the previous movie. Scary movies work based, in part, on the consistency and internal logic of the “curses” they portray.

Japanese director Takashi Shimizu still manages to create a few popcorn-tossing, Whopper-clutching scenes despite the lapses in plot logic. Most of what happens to the trio of schoolgirls in Japan is reminiscent of Sarah Michelle Gellar’s haunting in the first movie, shower scene and all. But other scenes deliver on their promise of scary by giving movie-goers the cheap thrills October releases are known for. The scaring of Jake’s new family, for example, adds the classic-and-effective element of the young boy being haunted late at night. Also, for true fans of the original film, the opening scene shows in detail the origins of the grudge.

Mostly, the PG-13 rating is due to the intensity that happens when dead girls stalk living people in the dark. There are also some disturbing scenes of violence and some brief sexuality.