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.

Out of Blue: Sort of Based on Martin Amis

As a police detective, Mike Hoolihan does not know much about Schrödinger’s Cat and the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, but she has an intuitive understanding of how the act of observing holds consequences (yes, she is a she). Her investigation into the death of a popular astronomy professor will involve a piecemeal education in quantum mechanic during Carol Morley’s Out of Blue, which opens this Friday in New York.

Hoolihan has lived hard and copped hard. She is a case-closing machine, but she refuses to investigate the memory holes shrouding her own early years. The shooting of Jennifer Rockwell would just be another workaday case for her, except the deceased was the daughter of powerful city councilman Col. Tom Rockwell. Early suspects include the victim’s colleagues, Prof. Ian Strammi and Duncan Reynolds, who both keep prattling on about Schrödinger’s Cat. Of course, Hoolihan is more interested in the case’s similarities with a notorious serial killer, who terrorized New Orleans decades prior.

Out of Blue (deliberately missing the article) is probably the haziest, most narratively diffuse police procedural this side of the postmodern novels of Alain Robbe-Grillet. Unfortunately, most of the references to astronomy and quantum mechanics feel like a pompous, scientistic overlay, instead of an organic function of the narrative.

Frankly, just about every aspect of the film feels like it is trying too hard, except Patricia Clarkson, who is just effortlessly hardboiled and broken down. She could pass for the more mature version of Nicole Kidman’s Erin Bell, fifteen or so years after the events in Destroyer.

Even though the cosmic mumbo jumbo really doesn’t work, Johnathan Majors still does a nice job of selling them as Reynolds (the real fault lays with Morley, who never lays the proper foundation or establishes sufficient context). James Caan is clearly on familiar ground as Col. Rockwell, but he is still highly functional in the part, even if he never pushes himself. However, Jacki Weaver brings some impressive nuttiness (even by her past standards), as the bereaved mother, Miriam Rockwell.

Page to screen adaptations do not get much looser than Morley’s treatment of Martin Amis’s short novel Night Train, but as a one-two punch with London Fields, it should pretty much dissuade any cinematic takes on the sly writer’s work, for at least the next ten years. As of now, he is looking pretty unadaptable. However, Morley made several inexplicable choices, including replacing the title instrumental blues song with Brenda Lee’s “I’ll Be Seeing You,” which is a little too on the nose, lyrically. On the other hand, the use of The Church’s “Under the Milky Way” over the closing credits is downright inspired.

Admittedly, cosmic dimensions of Out of Blue sound cool and distinctive, but the execution doesn’t come together. Morley (best known for the massively depressing hybrid documentary, Dreams of a Life) never exhibits full command of her material, but Clarkson is right on the money, proving she is still one of the best in the business (even in flawed vehicles). It just really ought to be better. Anyone intrigued by its ambitions should wait until it pops up on free streaming platforms, which should be sometime soon after it opens this Friday (3/22) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Tribeca ’16: Equals

In the future, employee fraternization will be strictly forbidden. The entire world will be a “safe place” because all emotions will be “switched-off” at birth. Unfortunately, Silas has contracted “Switched-On Syndrome,” or “the Bug.” As a result, he has it bad for his co-worker, whom he also suspects is similarly afflicted. All love is forbidden and hurts like the dickens in Drake Doremus’s Equals (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Instead of Big Brother, the drones of this Collective are constantly inundated with PSAs designed to maintain public order. Silas has what still ought to be a cool job working as an illustrator, but he constantly asks Nia unnecessary questions about her stories. That makes her uncomfortable, perhaps too uncomfortable. It turns out Nia is indeed a “hider,” who secretly tries to control her SOS symptoms to avoid being ostracized like Silas, who admitted Maoist-style to his stage-one condition.

Silas and Nia soon commence a reckless, highly illegal love affair. He also gets some understanding and practical advice from an underground support group led by Jonas and Bess. The latter will be especially handy to know, since she is a hider working at the Collective’s dreaded Health and Safety Department. Inevitably, Silas and Nia are discovered, at which point Equals becomes a dystopian riff on Romeo & Juliet.

Granted, we have seen this severe future before, but maybe we need to see it again, because we keep forgetting how much freedom we sacrifice when we demand absolute safety from the government. The Switched-Off science of Equals might be speculative, but its implications are already with us. Doremus and his location scouts also help freshen things up with some strikingly neo-futuristic backdrops, including the I.M. Pei designed Miho Museum in Japan and Singapore’s Marina Barrage and Henderson Wave Bridge. If Kristen Stewart fans start making Equals pilgrimages, they might actually learn a little something about modernist architecture and Asian art.

Of course, probably Doremus’ most inspired strategic decision was casting Stewart and Nicholas Hoult as a couple trying to hide their emotions. Presumably, his direction amounted to “be yourselves.” They look perfect together, as if you could stick them on a dystopian wedding cake in World on a Wire or Gattica. Fortunately, Guy Pearce and Jacki Weaver are reliably engaging as Jonas and Bess. Evidently, when an all-powerful collective starts bleaching the human spirit you can still trust Australians. Unfortunately, Claudia Kim is ridiculously under-employed as the PSA voice of the Collective.

In retrospect, the relative reserve of Doremus’s conclusion is rather fitting, even if the optimism is forced. Regardless, it is a stylish and arguably somewhat timely return to the tightly regimented future 1984 and Metropolis warned of decades ago. Recommended for fans of anti-utopian and relationship-driven science fiction, Equals screens again this afternoon (4/21), as a Viewpoints selection of the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival.

Haunt: A House is not a Home

If you have seen The Grudge, you understand the dead are rather angry at the world in general. As it happens there are very specific reasons why the Ashers’ new house does not have such a homey feel. Their teenage son and his new girlfriend will find themselves caught up in the supernatural goings on in Mac Carter’s Haunt (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Evidently, Evan Asher has some issues in the past, but his parents initially think this move will be good for him, especially, when he immediately picks up with Sam, a nice girl from the trailer park side of the tracks. Unfortunately, his room is right next to the house’s secret cellar door, where it all went down, whatever it was. Coming across an old radio tube contraption of a Ouija board, the teens inadvertently stir up the angry presences even more.

Although the Asher parents remain duly oblivious, freaky things start happening. Yet, Sam still prefers crashing at their house than dealing with her abusive father. Jane Morello, the mother and only surviving member of the previous family, ought to have some insight into the house’s dark history, but she is reluctant to talk, except to provide the film’s occasional voice-overs.

Haunt is a good example of how a horror film can realize a very creepy vibe on a limited budget. All the ominous nooks and crannies of the house and that cursed box give the film a memorable look. While the narrative is relatively simple, Carter does not blatantly telegraph the final shoe to drop. In fact, following the big reveal, he wraps it up rather precipitously, almost seeming rushed.

The kids are at least alright in Haunt, particularly Liana Liberato, who comes across much more natural and grounded than the cringey problem daughters she played in Erased and the train wreck that was Trespass. Harrison Gilbertson helps make amends for Virginia’s manic-depressive melodrama with his reasonably restrained and engaging work as the teenaged Asher. It is a little mind-blowing to see Ione Skye (from Say Anything and River’s Edge) as the clueless mom, but she is fine adhering to minimal demands of the time-honored stock character. However, it is Jacki Weaver who really gets to chew some scenery in her all too brief appearances as the widow Morello.

Ironically, Haunt probably would have been less effective if it had greater resources at its disposal. Flashy special effects would have ruined the intimate scares. Ragged around the edges, but respectably scrappy, Haunt is recommended for horror movie fans when it opens today (3/7) in New York at the IFC Center.