Tuesday, May 03, 2016

Japanese ghosts are nasty

In the early 2000's, I was busy baby wrangling (with my wife, of course) and so didn't catch up with the Japanese ghost/horror genre of the likes of The Ring, and The Grudge.

Well, on Sunday night my son declared an interest in watching something scary, so I found the 2004 US version of The Grudge available on the streaming service Stan.

The movie received mixed reviews at the time, and I'm not the biggest fan of Sarah Michelle Gellar, but it did strike me (and my son, more so) as being very efficient at delivering scares.    I liked the way it was set in the complete opposite of a gothic city (Tokyo), and the silence that accompanied many of the dreaded "walking up the stairs to see what's making that sound" scenes.   I see that it was only rated PG-13 in the US (on Stan it showed as M), and I am quite surprised at that - it would have to be one of the creepiest movies to get that rating, surely?

After it finished, something fell unexpectedly out of the cupboard behind the living room, delivering an appropriate final fright for the night.

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