JASON AND JONNY, BOY DETECTIVES

THE GRUDGE
(directed by Takashi Shimizu, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar + Jason Behr)

JASON: According to The Grudge, the Japanese believe that when someone dies in a terrible rage, their spirit forever haunts the place where it happened, creating a vortex of death and destruction. It's strange how no one mentioned this in Lost in Translation. I just thought the country had nothing but pervs, short people and politeness freaks.

JONNY: Yeah, and considering the resentful spirit's aptitude at picking off Americans in Japan one by one, maybe it's taking revenge for all those tasteful jokes about "brack" toe sushi and "lipping" stockings. Thankfully The Grudge was short on gaijin whining about how things are so different from how they are in the States, but it was also long on.... long. It kind of takes a while for nothing much to happen, and as you said at the pub, it doesn't give Sarah Michelle Gellar much to do. But for schlock-SF fans, it's got Jason Behr from Roswell and Clea DuVall from The Faculty, also waiting their turns to die!

JASON: Even finer for Fangoria readers is the chance to see Buffy have thoughtful conversations with the unfortunate bastard who gets his foot sawn off in Takashi Miike's Audition. And speaking as the sort of J-horror geek (hey, new jargon) who's seen the original Ju-On twice and many of the other titles that influenced it (especially Kiyoshi Kurosawa's far superior Pulse and Cure, and Ringu director Hideo Nakata's soon-to-be-Americanized Dark Water), I can say that all this was way scarier with: a) a plot that actually made less sense; b) longer shots of the freaky stuff; and c) less of the doomy music and sound FX telegraphing every would-be shock.

JONNY: I know! Don't people know by now that you shouldn't climb up into dark attics when there's scary music playing?

JASON: That said, women with really long black hair still scare the hell out of me - I cry every time I see a picture of Crystal Gayle.