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"THE GRUDGE"
 (2020) (Andrea Riseborough, Demián Bichir) (R)

Read Our Full Content Movie Review for Parents
QUICK TAKE:
Horror: A recently widowed cop tries to figure out what's responsible for a series of murders related to one house in the town where she now lives with her young son.
PLOT:
Det. Muldoon (ANDREA RISEBOROUGH) is a recently widowed cop who's moved to the small town of Cross River with her young son, Burke (JOHN P. HANSEN), following the death of her husband a few months ago. She's partnered with veteran cop Det. Goodman (DEMIÁN BICHIR) who isn't pleased when they arrive on the scene of the discovery of a badly decomposed corpse. It's not so much the death that bothers him, but rather that the woman was associated with a particular house in town where various murders and deaths have occurred over the years, something that drove his former cop partner, Det. Wilson (WILLIAM SADLER), crazy.

Intrigued by that, Det. Muldoon begins looking into the past history there that began when Fiona Landers (TARA WESTWOOD), having returned from Tokyo after contending with supernatural phenomenon, murdered her husband and their young daughter, Melinda (ZOE FISH), before killing herself. That haunting then ended up affecting real estate agent Peter Spencer (JOHN CHO) and his pregnant wife, Nina (BETTY GILPIN), and a few years later William Matheson (FRANKIE FAISON), his terminally ill wife, Faith (LIN SHAYE), and an assisted suicide advocate, Lorna Moody (JACKI WEAVER), who he hired to help Faith depart this world.

As Det. Muldoon continues her research, she too ends up afflicted by the supernatural curse that causes her to have ghostly visions and encounters that lead her to the point of losing her sanity.

OUR TAKE: 3 out of 10
Our reviewing policy for films that aren't shown in advance to critics is that we'll only provide a paragraph or two about the film's artistic merits or, more accurately, lack thereof. After all, life is too short to spend any more effort than that on a movie that even the releasing studio knows isn't any good (which is why they hid it from reviewers before its release).

Bringing nothing new to the "Grudge" franchise, this reboot-continuation of the earlier films (that were American remakes of the original Japanese films) is a pointless exercise in trotting out standard haunted house tropes (mainly plenty of telegraphed jump scenes). It also wastes a decent cast and doesn't take advantage of secondary storyline material related to family trauma that could have added interesting levels to what's otherwise uninspired and recycled material.

The film rates as a 3 out of 10.




Reviewed January 2, 2020 / Posted January 3, 2020

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