Grudge Match

The Grudge and Ju-On, head to head.

Counting the TV show and straight-to-video prequels, The Grudge is J-horror maestro Takashi Shimizu’s fifth go-round at the Grudge/Ju-On mythos, though it hews pretty close to last year’s theatrical version, which opened in Philadelphia last month. Herewith a list of the major departures, most attributable to Stephen Susco’s script:

Ju-On's opening flashbacks are replaced by a scene in which an American college professor (Bill Pullman) throws himself to his death. (His hilariously skanky wife is an added bonus.)

Generally speaking, The Grudge's script clarifies the curse's person-to-person progression, as well as the film's temporal leaps. You no longer have the sensation of not knowing whether you've jumped forward in time or back. It's also more clear what happens to the victims: Two turn up as dessicated corpses in the house's attic, while one returns jawless, like the zombie in Day of the Dead.

Hand in hand with the curse's clarified progression is a reduction in the number of victims. The security guard, for example, is no longer swallowed up in shadow. The radio reports that indicate the curse is continuing to spread are notably absent.

Increased focus on the movie's heroine eliminates the character of the detective who investigated the original crime, which means no mind-bending sequence in which the dead father appears to his now-grown daughter. Also no zombified Japanese schoolgirls.

Minor changes to the American version's ending greatly minimize Ju-On's domestic violence subtext. Instead of coming face-to-face with the dead woman who's been haunting her and then seeing the abusive husband behind her (suggesting that he is the real, as yet unseen villain), the heroine encounters the husband's ghost, escapes, runs into her battered boyfriend (another distracting addition) and then confronts the dead woman. What's more, the added information that the dead woman provoked her husband's rage by developing an infatuation with the American professor completely muddies the water, suggesting that she bears some of the guilt for her own death.

Mall hair, asymmetrical tops, fake boobs.

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