MOVIES FROM HELL: The Grudge

Let me tell you every single good thing about The Grudge, which I saw last weekend.

1) It has a few decently creepy images, especially that bit with the jawbone.

2)

3)

Hmm, I guess that was it.

As for the bad things, well, I don't want to write a novel here. I can pretty much sum it up with the fact that this is the most poorly written movie I have ever seen, with characters that would need two additional dimensions just to become one dimensional. There is nothing to the characters. Nothing. NOTHING. They exist only to be scared or killed. I have seen a lot of horror movies, and even the very worst make some effort at token characterization. This guy's a football star, this guy's a nerd who wants to get laid, this gal's a goth with attitude. But in The Grudge: nothing.

It doesn't help that Sarah Michelle Gellar, who was often so good on Buffy, is little more than an ambulatory mannequin here. If there's something going on behind those big, moist, googly eyes of hers, she doesn't let the audience in on it. She's an accessory, like a battery the film had to plug in to get the plot moving. ("Plot"? HA!) She moved to Japan to be with her boyfriend, but we don't get a sense of how she feels about that move. Is she frightened? Excited? Feeling displaced? Lonely? What? She works for a service that sends caretakers out to people's homes -- but how does she like her job? How did she get into that line of work? Is she a good person who likes to help others, or is it just a paycheck to her? Nothing about her exists other than to serve the machinations of the plot. She moved to Japan because the movie is set in Japan. She's a social worker because she has to go to the haunted house. Her boyfriend exists for the sole purpose of getting killed. (Whoopsie! Spoiler! Gee, I hope I didn't make you not want to see the movie now! Actually, you know what? I'm gonna spoil the hell out of this movie, so stop reading if you give a damn.)

The movie jumps around in time a lot, for no good reason. For no reason, period. As Roger Ebert says in his review, it's "a nuisance, not a style." Sometimes a young American couple along with the man's mother live in the house; sometimes it's just the mother. Sometimes a Japanese girl is the mother's caretaker, sometimes it's Gellar. And sometimes Bill Pullman shows up, even though he kills himself in the first minute of the movie. (Told you I was gonna spoil it!)

Turns out Bill Pullman is kind of the cause of all the badness in the movie; he's a teacher, see, and apparently one of his old students is in love with him, even though she's married. Well, the husband finds out, kills her, kills their son, hangs himself. Voila! Haunted house. Why she loves him... that's a mystery, one that's never explored. He's as much a personality-less drone as anyone else in the film. We never even see her interacting with him, we just see a bunch of pictures. By the time Pullman even becomes aware of her obsession, she's already dead. Also, why does Pullman then kill himself? There's no ghostly activity that drove him to drop off his balcony. Guilt? Who knows? His death has no impact on the film whatsoever, other than to provide a shock right at the beginning.

There's a lot of stuff that happens for no reason in this movie. Why is it set in Japan? No reason, other than the director is from Japan. The setting doesn't enhance the scariness, nor does the culture have any effect on the primarily American characters. A Japanese detective at one point says, "In Japan, it is believed..." blah blah curse, blah blah evil. But, even with that one attempt to justify it, really there's no reason for the location. What, we don't have ghost stories in America?

My favorite scene in the movie, by the way, doesn't have any ghosts, or anything scary at all. The female half of the young American houseowning couple is in the supermarket. She's confused by the foreign language items on the shelf. She picks up one foil-covered container, sneaks a peek around to see if anyone's watching, then pokes a hole in the top and sniffs to see what it is. OH MY GOD!!! That is just reams of information. That is fountains of character development. No, rivers. Oceans! By this film's standards, her character is now as fully fleshed-out as Hamlet. Don't blink or you'll miss it!

The movie's not big on dialogue, either. I'd say a good 80-85% of the film is people creeping slooooowly and silently down dark hallways. And a good 90% of what dialogue there actually is is along the lines of, "Yoko? Are you all right?" Followed by: "AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!"

No, Yoko is not all right. Which brings me to the one good thing about the movie, the handful of creepy images. Yoko is the first person we see killed by the ghost. All that is found of her is her jawbone. When she later shows up at the social agency where she worked, and her boss asks the above inane question, she turns around, and the lower part of her face is missing, with her tongue horribly lolling out of the crater. That's a good, creepy image. The ghosts of the wife and the little boy have disturbing faces, and make unsettling noises (spoiled somewhat by the teenage idiot and her idiot mother sitting in front of me at the theater, who both insisted on mimicking the cat-like wail of the boy, or the death-rattle croak of the wife. I hate people).

But those few scary components do not add up to a good movie. Hell, they barely add up to a movie. This was pure awful. I snuck into it after Team America, and I still felt ripped off.

TV: Various premieres

Smallville: I don't care for the Lois Lane character. I don't find the actress attractive at all -- which I may be alone on, judging from my recent search engine traffic, which I presume has been generated by my one mention of her name in this post. (I refuse to mention her name again, because, while I still find the search engine hits for "Misty May's ass" amusing -- by the way: Misty May's ass -- I'm not quite as pleased by all the "[actress' name]+topless+nude+naked+tits" hits I've been getting.) And the character is 100% unlikeable. I know, Lois Lane is traditionally brash and aggressive and so forth. But actresses such as Margot Kidder or Teri Hatcher have made those traits disarming and endearing. This actress just comes off as a royal bitch. I can't believe Ma Kent didn't smack the living hell out of her when she burst into her house like that.

Margot Kidder's appearance was fun, but what was with all the WB promos touting her "surprise" cameo? No, you just frickin' told us she would be on the show. That's not a surprise, dumbasses. And is black kryptonite a comic book thing, or is that a Smallville original?

Also, Lana's new boyfriend is a tool.

I enjoyed the hell out of seeing Clark fly, and that take-off was stunning. But this show greatly exceeded my daily allowance of Tom Welling's ass (which, for future reference, is 0%). (Man, I dread the search engine hits that sentence is gonna generate.) If you want to keep putting Lana in the shower, on the other hand, I'm okay with that.

So, Allison Mack and Sam Jones are out of the opening credits. Interesting. It looks like they've left the door open for Chloe to return, but Pete -- not so much. Did anyone even mention his name this episode? And why does Clark insist on being such a doofus about concealing his powers? He uses his X-ray vision on Chloe's coffin, sees it's empty, and instantly tells Lois, "Chloe's still alive." Way to play it cool, there, Clark.

A little too much business to deal with in this episode. Hopefully, now that everything's settled down, the next will be better.

Veronica Mars: The number of shows on UPN I have ever enjoyed has just doubled. (From one -- Enterprise -- to two. And I'm not counting Buffy; the WB developed it, they get the credit.) I really enjoyed this show. The lead actress is very appealing, and her character is smart, brave, and funny. I got a kick out of seeing two TV stand-bys as her parents: Enrico Colantoni (of Just Shoot Me), and Corinne Bohrer (whom I've had a crush on since she was on E/R -- no, not the one currently on the air, but the 80s sitcom starring Elliott Gould and, unbelievably, George Clooney).

The show was created by Rob Thomas, who also created one of my favorite cancelled-too-soon shows of all time, Cupid (which I've written about before). The look of the pilot is a little disappointing; I have to assume it was shot on the cheap, considering it's on UPN, and it shows. But the acting and the writing are more than entertaining enough to make up for that.

I got a little put off by how much misery is dumped on Veronica's head in this one episode. We learn: her best friend was murdered; her father, the Sheriff, botched the investigation and was fired, leading to their dreary financial situation; the man her father accused of the murder was her best friend's father, which led to both her boyfriend (her best friend's brother) dumping her, and her total ostracization by all her former friends; her mother, an alcoholic, ran out on her, and may even be having an affair with the best friend's father; and, to top it all off, at a party she was drugged and raped. It was at that point I said, "Oh, come on!" What else can be done to her? Will she develop a brain tumor? Will her dog get rabies? Will a piano fall from the sky and land on her? Geez, enough already.

But an awful lot of future plotlines were established here, and I think this show could be a real winner. Except for the fact that it's on UPN, which probably means eight episodes and out.

Lost: I loved it. But I'm holding off on talking about it here, because I've already written a column about it for Forces of Good, which will be going live a week from today. Don't forget to check it out!

So all I have to say is: seriously, do not miss this show. It's fantastic.