The Grudge (2020): Because You Can’t Keep an Angry Ghost Down

It’s human-to-human transmission rate is minimal, but the site of Kayako Saeki’s violent angry death is 100% infectious. The death rate is nearly as high. It is time to go back to Tokyo circa 2004, where it all started for the American remake series. Instead of rebooting, the series branches off in a separate, simultaneous, but not so radically different direction in Nicolas Pesce’s The Grudge, which releases today on DVD.

Flashback to 2004: Fiona Landers is an expat social worker in Japan, who pays an inspection visit to the house of horrors that started it all. She subsequently returns home, taking Kayako and her grudge with her. Soon, tragedy strikes the Landers family, as evil become deeply rooted in their home. That means Saeki is quite an efficient multi-tasker, since she was simultaneously tormenting Sarah Michelle Gellar in The Grudge (2004).

For obvious reasons, the Landers House quickly develops an evil reputation. Det. Goodman still refuses to step foot inside it, which seems rather strange to his new partner, Det. Muldoon, since he ostensibly investigated the multiple homicides that occurred there. It wasn’t just the Landers who met untimely deaths. The realtors handling the sale of the property, Peter and pregnant Nina Spencer, met similar fates.

As is usually the case in horror movies, Muldoon relocated to exurban Pennsylvania hoping to find a safer, more stable environment to raise her son Burke after her husband’s devastating death from cancer. Needless to say, those plans go out the window once she enters the Landers house. From there on, she is in for the full Grudge treatment.

The Grudge 2020 is a respectable American installment in the franchise, but Pesce’s reputation as the indie auteur who helmed The Eyes of My Mother and Piercing will raise many fans expectations well above what the film delivers. We’ve seen just about all of it before, but Pesce does it with a surprisingly prestigious cast. There are two Oscar nominees in Grudge 2020: Demian Bichir, who is terrific as the devout but world-weary Goodman and Jacki Weaver, who helps humanize the thankless role of Lorna Moody, an assisted suicide activist, who pays an ill-fated visit to the current owners of the Landers house.

The Hunt: Forget Your Preconceptions

This might shock some people, but Donald Trump is a terrible film critic, especially when he hasn’t even seen the film in question. He pilloried this much maligned satire about liberal elites hunting red state conservatives, but it never really made sense how that premise could be a good look for the left. We could only wonder when the film’s release was postponed out of sensitivity to tragic news events. Ironically, those who retweeted Trump’s thinly veiled comments could be the ones who most enjoy Craig Zobel’s Blumhouse-produced The Hunt when it opens today nationwide—at least wherever theaters are still open. Seriously, this film cannot buy a break.

A group of snide leftwingers has abducted a group of “deplorables” (that would be there word for them), who will come to in a remote clearing wearing ball gags. As the bullets whiz by their heads, they figure out they are being hunted, but it will take them a bit of time to understand why. Supposedly to be sporting, the hunters also left them a crate of firearms, but the initial culling will be brutal.

Crystal, an Afghanistan veteran currently working a dead-end car rental job, is one of the few to survive the first ten minutes. Her survival skills are still finely honed and she has razor-sharp tactical judgment. As she navigates her way through the trap-laden countryside (that turns out to be somewhere in the Balkans), she steadily evens up the score. Of course, we can safely assume she will eventually face-off against Athena, the shadowy leader of “The Hunt.”

Again, who in their right mind would consider the concept of “The Hunt” good propaganda for the hard-left cause? Obviously, the participating hunters are profoundly intolerant of diverse opinions and show a fundamental disregard for the sanctity of life. Screenwriters Nick Cuse & Damon Lindelof also skewer the absurdity of their identity politics and the utter hypocrisy their “limousine liberal” snobbery and contempt for average working-class people. Really, the only thing the rightwing prey gets tagged with is a propensity to retweet fake news, but even that takes on rather complex and ironic dimensions.