Sequel no better than the original

I reviewed the first GRUDGE movie, URL">http://www.epinions.com/content_180194020996 , and I didn't care much for it. For no logical reason, I made a point of seeing this sequel and I liked it even less.

To reprise from the first flick, there's this old house in Tokyo that's haunted with this ghost - actually two ghosts - a young (Japanese) woman with very long hair and her little boy. They were tormented and murdered in this house some years ago, and now anyone who sets foot inside the house is going to be haunted and killed. At the end of the film, a young American tries to burn down the house but is killed by the ghosts before he succeeds, so his girlfriend (Sarah Michelle Gellar) finishes the job (we are told that the house survived the fire). She's injured in the process, is taken off to the hospital and the last thing we see is the woman's ghost about to pounce on her.
End of the first GRUDGE (2004).

GRUDGE 2 was ordered by the film studio three days after the first movie hit the theatres. It has some of the same defects of the first movie -- it lacks logic even by horror movie standards, and there is no resolution or remedy. Essentially, every few minutes the ghost jumps out and says Boo. It is also told in a very disjointed way; there are at least three plots, each running at different times chronologically but scrambled in the movie so that it takes quite a while to sort out what happened first, second, and third.

The special effects are well done and the actors take this movie seriously. But my dissatisfaction with this movie is so great that I am going to SPOIL it for you by summarizing the whole plot in its logical sequence:

Within a day of the end of the first movie, Aubrey (Amber Tamblyn), the sister of Gellar's character, is dispatched by their mother (Joanna Cassidy, who appears for a whole three minutes and does her whole part in bed with the covers pulled up) to Tokyo to see her sister in the hospital. It turns out none of the nurses speak English but Aubrey is helped by a fluent Hong Kong journalist (Edison Chen). Gellar is in the psych ward, recovering from her (minor) burns and is a suspect in the death of her boyfriend. Gellar immediately becomes hysterical and is tied down and sedated and Aubrey is ushered out. The female ghost unties Gellar, who rushes out of her room. You'll be reassured to know that the psych ward in Japanese hospitals is not locked, even for criminal suspects, nor are escapees seriously pursued, and Gellar is able to make her way - with the ghost in pursuit - into an unlocked machine room that opens (unlocked) onto a roof terrace without a railing. Gellar hits the pavement just as Aubrey and the journalist are leaving the hospital.

Mourning and police investigations being what they are, the very next day the journalist takes Aubrey to the haunted house. Even though it's only three days since the death and fire in the house, they have no problem, and no qualms, getting in. The journalist finds a composition book and takes it with him, and both of them glimpse something spooky. The composition book reveals that the young woman who haunts the house was raised in a rural village by a mother who was the village exorcist; she took evil spirits out of clients and deposited them in the girl who later became the ghost. The journalist makes immediate plans for the two of them to visit this village and find the mother. Then the journalist is killed in his darkroom by the ghost. Instead of being delayed by any tedious investigation, Aubrey sets out by herself to the village. She finds the mother -- unlike the nurses in the Tokyo hospital, this elderly woman who's lived all her life in a rural backwater speaks excellent English. Mother explains that her daughter's ghost cannot be laid to rest, that it will only become more dangerous with time. Then Mother is killed by the ghost. Aubrey doesn't wait around for the local police, she heads back to Tokyo. She goes straight to the one place she's been told not to go - the haunted house - and has a vision of how the young woman and child were killed by her insane husband. And then she is caught up in the vision and killed just like the young woman was. End of Aubrey.

Some days (maybe months or even years) later, three teenage girls from a local international prep school visit the haunted house on a lark. They each see something spooky and run out. That night one of them, Miyuki (Misako Uno), is simply grabbed by the ghost and disappears while her boyfriend's back is turned. The next day another of them, Vanessa (Teresa Palmer), is chased out of the school and similarly made to vanish by the ghost. That leaves Allison (Arielle Kebbel), who has nightmares and something akin to a nervous breakdown. So much for the Tokyo part of the story.

At about this time, in a Chicago apartment building, Bill (Christopher Cousins) brings his second wife, Trish (Jennifer Beals), home from their honeymoon. Trish settles in with Bill's children, teenage Lacey (Sarah Roemer) and ten year old Jake (Matthew Knight), and it looks like a wholesome family household. But that night Jake looks out the apartment door and sees the neighbors bringing their obviously sick child home. From that point on, things in that apartment building floor become creepy. The neighbors have allowed their kid to cover the windows with newspapers. Another teenage girl starts acting really weird. Bill and Trish start bickering, and this is finally settled when Trish calmly bashes Bill's skull with a frying pan and then finishes the breakfast he had complained about. Lacey is found drowned in the tub and when Jake pulls out her body, suddenly Trish appears in the tub, fully clothed, to tell Jake it's time for his bath, and then ghostly hands pull Trish underwater and she disappears. Jake rushes out to the neighbors' apartment -- but finds the couple dead on the floor, and their sick kid, when you pull back the hoodie, is none other than Aubrey, still in shock from her experience in Tokyo. As Jake watches in horror, a ghostly hand inside the hood pulls Aubrey down and then she is replaced in the hood by the ghost, who pounces on Jake. End of movie.

So we don't even have a temporary remedy, like those Amityville Horror movies. We just have a ghost who's been brought to the US for no logical purpose, and is now attacking completely innocent people, who never even visited Tokyo much less the haunted house, with the door left open for a third flick. Very unsatisfactory as I said.

No, I don't recommend it. But it did reasonably well at the box office so maybe some people like that kind of ghost story.