Reviewed by Phil Wheat
Stars Shawnee Smith, Matthew Knight, Emi Ikehata, Aiko Horiuchi,
Shimba Tsuchiya, Marina Sirtis, Takatsuna Mukai | Written by Brad Keene
UK certification 15 | UK RRP £15.99 | DVD Region 2 | Runtime 93 minutes | Directed by Toby Wilkins
Jake, the sole survivor of The Grudge 2, is confined to a psychiatric hospital under the watch of Dr Sullivan, played by Saw's Shawnee Smith. After Jake is brutally murdered in his hospital room by a ghostly assailant, Dr. Sullivan comes to realise his stories of a demonic long black haired killer are true. Over in Tokyo, the evil Kayako's sister, Naoko, hears of Jake's death through a newspaper report. Knowing how to stop the curse, she travels to America and takes up residence in the haunted Chicago apartment block from the previous film. There she meets the landlord Max and his two sisters, Lisa and Rose. And Rose it seems is communicating with the ghostly Toshio. As more deaths occur it becomes a race against time for Naoko to try and stop the curse, and end this grudge once and for all.
The Grudge 3 differs from its prequels in many ways. It is the first Grudge film not to be directed by Takashi Shimizu, and, unlike the first two films in the franchise, the gore quotient has been upped considerably, especially in the final 20 minutes of the film. The added gore is probably to make up for the fact that the film is not that scary... The main cast of Max, Lisa and Rose play more like a typical American TV family, ala Party of Five, rather than characters in the middle of a terrifying situation. And thats the problem: the entire cast seems to be struck by an "I can't act frightened" disease - the only one who shines is Shawnee Smith, and she should, she's had enough horror experience!
What also lets The Grudge 3 down is the flat direction - Toby Wilkins made a brilliant film in Splinter, but here he can't seem to get any decent scares out of his cast or script. The only thing that Wilkin's Splinter and The Grudge 3 do have in common is the twitchy, in-your-face movements of the monsters. Gone is the creepy, looming movements of Shimizu's Kayako and Toshio, now they lumber and jump around the screen in the broken puppet style of Splinter's monsters. Where this third film in The Grudge franchise is successful however, is in expanding on the mythology set up in The Grudge 2, that of the ghosts as "soul-eaters" - an expansion that clearly has been put in place to allow a never-ending stream of sequels if this film's denouement is anything to go by...
EXTRAS None