The Grudge 2: Critic Reviews

What's a bad sequel but a revenant soul doomed to repeat itself?

Like its progenitor, The Grudge 2 is filled with defective light bulbs, scummy bath water and camera work that makes even teenage flesh look mottled.

Please let's pull the plug on this insanely over-promoted, over-rated horror brand.

Even my pathological love of Japan and its beauties, glories and eccentricities is sorely tested by The Grudge 2, from Takashi Shimizu, a movie so bewildering and impenetrable that I believe it siphoned off a good 40 IQ points.

Takako Fuji and Ohga Tanaka, as the ghosts, do MTV Movie Award-caliber work by just crouching in a phone booth.

Very little about the plot actually makes sense, but who needs logic when you've got a creepy ghost child and his banshee mom lurking around?

The Grudge 2, Takashi Shimizu's wildly uneven but ambitious new film -- his second American remake -- is one of the best entries in the Japanese director's Ju-On/Grudge series.

The film feels more like several small, disconnected pieces thrown together rather than a satisfying whole.

Story is incidental, as auds merely anticipate the scares.

The movie is utter junk, suitable perhaps for late-night TV, but not for the thousands of big screens on which it opened yesterday.

It is a testament to the power of filmmaking that even a waste of time like Grudge 2 can raise a slew of interesting questions to keep you thinking for a long time after leaving the theatre.

This particular Grudge proves too pointless to bear.

There are a couple of good jumps here and there, but we've seen this all before. And the creepy, dead girl, having been infinitely parodied (especially in Scary Movie 4), doesn't seem quite so creepy anymore.

Grudge 2 is such a complete rehash of its predecessor that it's likely that those who haven't seen the original (American or Japanese versions) will enjoy the sequel more than those who have.

Takashi Shimizu telegraphs scares to the point of numbness. Peek under a table? There's the boy! The room a bit too quiet, is it? It's the girl! All that's frightening are the actors' pained facial expressions, suggesting an epidemic of farty indigestion.

Seven films later, with the conventions of throat croaking and neck cracking having moved into camp, it's amazing that Shimizu can still find new ways to turn the old screw.

Repetition is the death of horror.

Pale-faced, staring, mute Japanese kids strike back.

...nothing more than a needless rehash of its predecessor...

full review in Greek