THE DUKE ON THE GRUDGE
On account of relating the story of the film about The Grudge
can get very confusing for the reader, especially if the reader
is reading that very article in question, The Duke has taken
liberties with the titles of the flicks in the Ju-On series.
A brief motherfucking run-down;
Ju-On – The Curse was a Japanese straight-to-video flick
directed by none other than Takashi Shimizu back in 2000. It’s
easily the best horror film of the last decade. What happened
was that The Duke had to pretend that I murdered somebody and
had buried them under the carpet, and that I could hear their
filthy, accusing heart beating and beating away, on account of I
didn’t want my peers to assume that this, a motherfucking
straight-to-video flick about some little boy with a white face
and a freaky woman doing a crawl down the stairs, was the cause
of the pale complexion and the sweating and the gripping ever
tighter on the knees.
We’ll call this Ju-On 1.
Ju-on – The Curse 2 was a straight-to-video number also, once
again written and directed by Shimizu. What happened was that he
just felt like flinging a load of scenes from the first one into
it, about half an hour to be precise, kinda like The Hidden 2,
when the motherfuckers didn’t even bother coming up with a new
start. Just use the old start, was the thinking. In fact, just
use the first half-hour, or so. That way, we don’t even have to
get off our arses until at least the second act. How ingenious
is this? Very, is what.
We’ll call this Ju-On 2.
Word started getting around that holy shit, did you see that
flick about a little boy with a white face, and something to do
with social workers and then his mum crawls about the place?
That was amazing. I shit myself.
Ju-on – The Grudge, then, was a theatrical remake of Ju-On 1.
Folks probably don’t feel too keen on saying about a straight-to-
video flick is their favourite horror of all ever, might have
been the thinking. What kinda credibility does that get a man,
in the cut-throat world of filmic criticism? It’s like saying
Wes Craven Presents The Mind Ripper is your favourite Wes Craven
film. Sure, it might get you some kind of ironic kudos of some
kind, but folks would still assume that, underneath it all,
you're a bit of a simpleton. Best to have Ju-On – The Grudge
play in the theatres, thereby legitimizing the accolade.
Interestingly, however, Ju-On – The Grudge, although it was a
remake, took the time to concoct different scenes and so on,
most of which are fantastic, and all the better because you
didn't already see them in Ju-On 1. Make a note of this.
We’ll call this Ju-On 3. It was also written and directed by
Takashi Shimizu.
Ju-On – The Grudge 2 was another theatrical number, and pretty
unique in the world of the Ju-On flicks, in that it even has a
central character and all sorts of unthinkable shit. The Duke’s
Review Can Be Found Here.
We’ll call that Ju-On 4.
So any the hell way, what happened was that Ju-On 3 found a fan
in no less an individual than Sam Raimi, director of such
milestone works in The Cinema Of Kirsten Dunst as Spider-Man and
Spider-Man 2 (a sequel to the original film, which was simply
called Spider-Man) and also all three Evil Dead flicks, as well
as some things with Billy Bob Thornton that nobody bothered
with, and one with Joey from Dawsons Creek that you only know
about because you saw the stills on those Nude Celebrity
webpages.
Joey got naked in that one.
Sam Raimi figured that the thing to do was to get Takashi
Shimizu to make yet another Ju-On picture, except here's the
twist – It’ll be all American, except still in Japan, and it’ll
have Buffy.
I mean come the fuck on, that Ring film made millions. Ju-On is
much better than Ringu, so it stands to reason that a remake of
it would probably make the likes of gazillions, or even
bazillions.
Sure enough, Takashi Shimizu remade Ju-On 3, but thankfully he
left off the Ju-On bit, so we can just call it The Grudge.
Now, dig this shit;
I don’t know if you were paying attention back there at the
start of the lecture, but what this amounts to is the
motherfucking fifth time Shimizu has told the same damn story,
more or less. Tell you the truth, I’d imagine he’s getting fed
up with it all. Fuck that little kid, he’s thinking. I see him
again I’m gonna puke myself to death. That woman can crawl down
the stairs and kiss my hole, is what. The fuck I wanna be doing
making another one of these damn things?
He did it anyway.
Now, you may remember that Ju-On 2 just stuck chunks of the
first one into the running-time and then fobbed it off in the
hope that no-one would give a shit. I mean, The Hidden 2 did it,
for crying out loud. It’s an homage to The Hidden 2, you cine-
illiterate oafs. Stop riding my ass, would you ever.
What he’s done this time, though, being The Grudge, ie, Ju-On 3
with added Buffy, is that he’s just filmed all the scenes again,
except instead of tension and atmosphere and wacky superfluous
bullshit like that, he’s just slapped a big old horror-movie-
theme over the top, and some CGI here and there.
So? It’s a remake. Of course he’s gonna do that shit all over
again, The Duke. What the hell do you expect him to do? Just, I
dunno, maybe come up with some new shit that stays true to the
tone of the originals, since, after all, it was the tone of the
things that pretty much secured them a spot in the cupboards of
greatness?
You were expecting something other than the scenes you love so
dearly being recreated with added Ted Raimi and Sarah Michelle
Gellar? And also a highly inappropriate, cloying score? Look up,
man. Look up at the clouds right now and you might see where
your expectations were languishing.
Fuck you, man. The Grudge is a fucking cop-out bullshit
travesty, is what The Duke believes, with regards the status of
The Grudge.
I mean The Fly was a remake, man. Did David Cronenberg have Jeff
Goldblum running around with a big fly head? He did not, is what
he did. Did he end it with Jeff Goldblum’s tiny little head
stuck to a bluebottle, and he’s on a spider’s web and screaming
“Help me!”? No, because we already saw that shit. What he wants
to do is blow Jeff Goldblum’s head off his damn shoulders with a
shotgun.
What about The Thing? I don’t know if you folks are versed in
The Motherfucking Cinema Of Howard Hawks, but if you thought he
had a scene were the fat doctor is trying to revive a corpse
with those pump things, and then the corpse’s chest opens and
bites the doctors damn arms off, and then the corpse’s neck
stretches to the floor so as the head can run about on spider
legs, if you thought that shit right there was in the original,
then it’s time you booked yourself an evening with The Thing…
From Another World.
Take a notebook with you. Make a note every time somebody’s head
crawls about the floor, or a dog’s face splits like a
motherfucking banana. I think you’ll be surprised. I think not
once did that shit happen, is what you’ll conclude.
The reason is that these remakes add something to the core text,
is what. What the hell use would The Fly be if it just did all
the shit you saw before on a bigger budget? Sure, the fly head
would be more realistic. Maybe they’d cover it up with some
slightly more expensive sheets, but you’d say it was pointless
and worthless and should have had a scene where Jeff Goldblum
pukes over some doughnuts.
Remember that Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho? Of course you do,
and what you remember is a bit with a cow standing in the middle
of a road for no reason, and another bit were the fella from Old
School wanks himself. You remember these things because they
made it all worthwhile. You said things about, “Well, I was a
bit sceptical when I heard about the whole shot-for-shot remake
idea. Pretty fucking pointless, I was thinking. But there he
goes, putting a shot of a cow in the middle of the road in
there. That made it worthwhile.”
Takashi Shimizu has a couple of Cow In The Road moments here,
amounting to about half a minute of screen-time. He has Bill
Pullman jump off a balcony at the start, pre-credits, and then
he adds a different shot to the bit were the sister is running
around her apartment building. Also, there’s some shots of Buffy
on a bus, adding to the whole Buffy Summers Investigates thing
he wants to play with a bit.
This is far from enough, however. This kinda shit is the reason
why even though folks remember David Cronenberg’s The Fly and
John Carpenter’s The Thing, they don’t remember anything at all
about Gus Van Sant’s Psycho except that it had a cow in the road
and some masturbatory wanking.
What The Grudge is like, is The Best Of Ju-On, except it’s not
like those Best Of’s that get advertised on TV and stuff. It’s
one of those ones you pick up for two quid in a supermarket and
then you get home and find that underneath the tracklisting
there’s a bit about “These are re-recordings featuring members
of the original line-up”, which usually means the drummer and
the bass player got plastered one evening and brought some folks
home from the pub for to mutilate their hits. Embarrassing, is
what those things are. I’d rather you just fucking stayed in the
pub, you’re thinking. Now you’ve gone and sullied my memories of
Shang-A-Lang beyond all reason.
The score sucks. Ju-On’s 1 through 4 had barely any damn score
to begin with, just a creepy plinky-plonk piano line every now
and again. Here we get generic cacophonous cack hanging from
every damn frame. Oh, there’ll be a scare coming up in ten
minutes or so. Best to start the “scary” music. Best to start
jump cutting and stuff. That’s what we’ll do.
The acting is pretty good, all being told. Unfortunately, Scary
Old Woman at the start has to try and out-scare Scary Old Woman
from Ju-On 3. If she thought this was something obtainable with
regards the “goals” and so on, she was barking up the wrong
hedge.
Worse than this, the “problems” that some folks like to yack
about concerning the original flicks are all in evidence here.
The fragmented, disjoined narrative in Ju-On’s 1 through 3, and
sort of used in Ju-On 4, is pretty fucking annoying here, when
it’s bundled alongside the Buffy Summers Investigates stuff, and
so feels more like extended flashbacks. He wants to have his
cake and eat it, this Takashi Shimizu. Well I’m sorry, man, but
according to science that’s just impossible. If you eat it, then
you don’t have it anymore, and even if you puke it up again like
Jeff Goldblum, even then it’s not the cake as you remember, it’s
just a load of smelly puke. Still, he ate it again anyway, that
filthy fucking Goldblum.
Also, the debt this owes to The Ring is the kinda thing he’ll
have to max every damn card in his collection out for to even
begin repaying. Not only is it being marketed as “Look! It’s The
Ring but different!”, it even steals that stupid crash-zoom that
they had in The Ring for to try and scare us.
Sure, those Asians did it without crash-zooms was the thinking,
but come on, man, they’re all mixed up over there. Didn’t you
see Lost In Japan with Bill Murray? They can’t even say R’s
properly.
Man oh man.
Still, the opening titles were cool.
Thanks folks.
BACK TO THE ASIAN HORROR REVIEW CUPBOARD
Drop The Duke A Line
can get very confusing for the reader, especially if the reader
is reading that very article in question, The Duke has taken
liberties with the titles of the flicks in the Ju-On series.
A brief motherfucking run-down;
Ju-On – The Curse was a Japanese straight-to-video flick
directed by none other than Takashi Shimizu back in 2000. It’s
easily the best horror film of the last decade. What happened
was that The Duke had to pretend that I murdered somebody and
had buried them under the carpet, and that I could hear their
filthy, accusing heart beating and beating away, on account of I
didn’t want my peers to assume that this, a motherfucking
straight-to-video flick about some little boy with a white face
and a freaky woman doing a crawl down the stairs, was the cause
of the pale complexion and the sweating and the gripping ever
tighter on the knees.
We’ll call this Ju-On 1.
Ju-on – The Curse 2 was a straight-to-video number also, once
again written and directed by Shimizu. What happened was that he
just felt like flinging a load of scenes from the first one into
it, about half an hour to be precise, kinda like The Hidden 2,
when the motherfuckers didn’t even bother coming up with a new
start. Just use the old start, was the thinking. In fact, just
use the first half-hour, or so. That way, we don’t even have to
get off our arses until at least the second act. How ingenious
is this? Very, is what.
We’ll call this Ju-On 2.
Word started getting around that holy shit, did you see that
flick about a little boy with a white face, and something to do
with social workers and then his mum crawls about the place?
That was amazing. I shit myself.
Ju-on – The Grudge, then, was a theatrical remake of Ju-On 1.
Folks probably don’t feel too keen on saying about a straight-to-
video flick is their favourite horror of all ever, might have
been the thinking. What kinda credibility does that get a man,
in the cut-throat world of filmic criticism? It’s like saying
Wes Craven Presents The Mind Ripper is your favourite Wes Craven
film. Sure, it might get you some kind of ironic kudos of some
kind, but folks would still assume that, underneath it all,
you're a bit of a simpleton. Best to have Ju-On – The Grudge
play in the theatres, thereby legitimizing the accolade.
Interestingly, however, Ju-On – The Grudge, although it was a
remake, took the time to concoct different scenes and so on,
most of which are fantastic, and all the better because you
didn't already see them in Ju-On 1. Make a note of this.
We’ll call this Ju-On 3. It was also written and directed by
Takashi Shimizu.
Ju-On – The Grudge 2 was another theatrical number, and pretty
unique in the world of the Ju-On flicks, in that it even has a
central character and all sorts of unthinkable shit. The Duke’s
Review Can Be Found Here.
We’ll call that Ju-On 4.
So any the hell way, what happened was that Ju-On 3 found a fan
in no less an individual than Sam Raimi, director of such
milestone works in The Cinema Of Kirsten Dunst as Spider-Man and
Spider-Man 2 (a sequel to the original film, which was simply
called Spider-Man) and also all three Evil Dead flicks, as well
as some things with Billy Bob Thornton that nobody bothered
with, and one with Joey from Dawsons Creek that you only know
about because you saw the stills on those Nude Celebrity
webpages.
Joey got naked in that one.
Sam Raimi figured that the thing to do was to get Takashi
Shimizu to make yet another Ju-On picture, except here's the
twist – It’ll be all American, except still in Japan, and it’ll
have Buffy.
I mean come the fuck on, that Ring film made millions. Ju-On is
much better than Ringu, so it stands to reason that a remake of
it would probably make the likes of gazillions, or even
bazillions.
Sure enough, Takashi Shimizu remade Ju-On 3, but thankfully he
left off the Ju-On bit, so we can just call it The Grudge.
Now, dig this shit;
I don’t know if you were paying attention back there at the
start of the lecture, but what this amounts to is the
motherfucking fifth time Shimizu has told the same damn story,
more or less. Tell you the truth, I’d imagine he’s getting fed
up with it all. Fuck that little kid, he’s thinking. I see him
again I’m gonna puke myself to death. That woman can crawl down
the stairs and kiss my hole, is what. The fuck I wanna be doing
making another one of these damn things?
He did it anyway.
Now, you may remember that Ju-On 2 just stuck chunks of the
first one into the running-time and then fobbed it off in the
hope that no-one would give a shit. I mean, The Hidden 2 did it,
for crying out loud. It’s an homage to The Hidden 2, you cine-
illiterate oafs. Stop riding my ass, would you ever.
What he’s done this time, though, being The Grudge, ie, Ju-On 3
with added Buffy, is that he’s just filmed all the scenes again,
except instead of tension and atmosphere and wacky superfluous
bullshit like that, he’s just slapped a big old horror-movie-
theme over the top, and some CGI here and there.
So? It’s a remake. Of course he’s gonna do that shit all over
again, The Duke. What the hell do you expect him to do? Just, I
dunno, maybe come up with some new shit that stays true to the
tone of the originals, since, after all, it was the tone of the
things that pretty much secured them a spot in the cupboards of
greatness?
You were expecting something other than the scenes you love so
dearly being recreated with added Ted Raimi and Sarah Michelle
Gellar? And also a highly inappropriate, cloying score? Look up,
man. Look up at the clouds right now and you might see where
your expectations were languishing.
Fuck you, man. The Grudge is a fucking cop-out bullshit
travesty, is what The Duke believes, with regards the status of
The Grudge.
I mean The Fly was a remake, man. Did David Cronenberg have Jeff
Goldblum running around with a big fly head? He did not, is what
he did. Did he end it with Jeff Goldblum’s tiny little head
stuck to a bluebottle, and he’s on a spider’s web and screaming
“Help me!”? No, because we already saw that shit. What he wants
to do is blow Jeff Goldblum’s head off his damn shoulders with a
shotgun.
What about The Thing? I don’t know if you folks are versed in
The Motherfucking Cinema Of Howard Hawks, but if you thought he
had a scene were the fat doctor is trying to revive a corpse
with those pump things, and then the corpse’s chest opens and
bites the doctors damn arms off, and then the corpse’s neck
stretches to the floor so as the head can run about on spider
legs, if you thought that shit right there was in the original,
then it’s time you booked yourself an evening with The Thing…
From Another World.
Take a notebook with you. Make a note every time somebody’s head
crawls about the floor, or a dog’s face splits like a
motherfucking banana. I think you’ll be surprised. I think not
once did that shit happen, is what you’ll conclude.
The reason is that these remakes add something to the core text,
is what. What the hell use would The Fly be if it just did all
the shit you saw before on a bigger budget? Sure, the fly head
would be more realistic. Maybe they’d cover it up with some
slightly more expensive sheets, but you’d say it was pointless
and worthless and should have had a scene where Jeff Goldblum
pukes over some doughnuts.
Remember that Gus Van Sant remake of Psycho? Of course you do,
and what you remember is a bit with a cow standing in the middle
of a road for no reason, and another bit were the fella from Old
School wanks himself. You remember these things because they
made it all worthwhile. You said things about, “Well, I was a
bit sceptical when I heard about the whole shot-for-shot remake
idea. Pretty fucking pointless, I was thinking. But there he
goes, putting a shot of a cow in the middle of the road in
there. That made it worthwhile.”
Takashi Shimizu has a couple of Cow In The Road moments here,
amounting to about half a minute of screen-time. He has Bill
Pullman jump off a balcony at the start, pre-credits, and then
he adds a different shot to the bit were the sister is running
around her apartment building. Also, there’s some shots of Buffy
on a bus, adding to the whole Buffy Summers Investigates thing
he wants to play with a bit.
This is far from enough, however. This kinda shit is the reason
why even though folks remember David Cronenberg’s The Fly and
John Carpenter’s The Thing, they don’t remember anything at all
about Gus Van Sant’s Psycho except that it had a cow in the road
and some masturbatory wanking.
What The Grudge is like, is The Best Of Ju-On, except it’s not
like those Best Of’s that get advertised on TV and stuff. It’s
one of those ones you pick up for two quid in a supermarket and
then you get home and find that underneath the tracklisting
there’s a bit about “These are re-recordings featuring members
of the original line-up”, which usually means the drummer and
the bass player got plastered one evening and brought some folks
home from the pub for to mutilate their hits. Embarrassing, is
what those things are. I’d rather you just fucking stayed in the
pub, you’re thinking. Now you’ve gone and sullied my memories of
Shang-A-Lang beyond all reason.
The score sucks. Ju-On’s 1 through 4 had barely any damn score
to begin with, just a creepy plinky-plonk piano line every now
and again. Here we get generic cacophonous cack hanging from
every damn frame. Oh, there’ll be a scare coming up in ten
minutes or so. Best to start the “scary” music. Best to start
jump cutting and stuff. That’s what we’ll do.
The acting is pretty good, all being told. Unfortunately, Scary
Old Woman at the start has to try and out-scare Scary Old Woman
from Ju-On 3. If she thought this was something obtainable with
regards the “goals” and so on, she was barking up the wrong
hedge.
Worse than this, the “problems” that some folks like to yack
about concerning the original flicks are all in evidence here.
The fragmented, disjoined narrative in Ju-On’s 1 through 3, and
sort of used in Ju-On 4, is pretty fucking annoying here, when
it’s bundled alongside the Buffy Summers Investigates stuff, and
so feels more like extended flashbacks. He wants to have his
cake and eat it, this Takashi Shimizu. Well I’m sorry, man, but
according to science that’s just impossible. If you eat it, then
you don’t have it anymore, and even if you puke it up again like
Jeff Goldblum, even then it’s not the cake as you remember, it’s
just a load of smelly puke. Still, he ate it again anyway, that
filthy fucking Goldblum.
Also, the debt this owes to The Ring is the kinda thing he’ll
have to max every damn card in his collection out for to even
begin repaying. Not only is it being marketed as “Look! It’s The
Ring but different!”, it even steals that stupid crash-zoom that
they had in The Ring for to try and scare us.
Sure, those Asians did it without crash-zooms was the thinking,
but come on, man, they’re all mixed up over there. Didn’t you
see Lost In Japan with Bill Murray? They can’t even say R’s
properly.
Man oh man.
Still, the opening titles were cool.
Thanks folks.
BACK TO THE ASIAN HORROR REVIEW CUPBOARD
Drop The Duke A Line
