The Grudge (2002)

"They're coming for me!"

This isn't the Hollywood remake with Sarah Michelle Gellar- it's the Japanese original, the one Sam Raimi raved about. So is it any good? Well, yes, but it's a good film, not a great one, where some fantastic horror set pieces and very good direction save what is an over-convoluted narrative with too many characters.

Films in multiple acts based on different characters can work, and work well; see the entire career of Quentin Tarantino, the master of making a non-linear narrative comprehensible to the average person. But a narrative horror film, based on the ramping up of tension and ever-increasing shocks, in which the supernatural horror is held back but shown in terrifying glimpses? Here, where such a narrative is technically done very well indeed, the chosen narrative style serves to destroy the overall effect of what are truly superb individual horror set pieces.

That doesn't take away from the effectiveness of those set pieces, though, and it's the direction that truly makes this film shine. A very modern horror, eschewing all sense of the Gothic for modern white interiors and brutalist exteriors has a very different and very effective look. Worth a go but perhaps, in spite of some technical excellence, not quite as good as its reputation.