Lesson Four: Capstone Review(The Grudge)The film I recently watched was The Grudge. The film was filmed entirely in Tokyo where Japanese director Takaghi Shimizu brought the popular Japanese horror stories to the American movie viewers. I went into The Grudge expecting a horror film based on the previews I had seen. When I watched the movie I found it to be quite a bit scary than what the previews had made it to be. So the film held up to its previews, however it was scary I would not rank it very high. The movie stars Sarah Michelle Gellar, During the film Sarah Michelle Gellar plays (Karen Davis) as an American exchange student who volunteers at a home care agency in return for university credit. When one of the regular nurses doesn’t show up for work, Karen is asked to sub for the day. The Tokyo residence she is sent to is a mess, while attending to the occupant-an elderly American woman, Karen witness something she has never seen before, her patient suddenly sits up and begins talking to someone or something, in the room. Shocked by what she seen, Karen is briefly hospitalized. She hears a strange noise coming from the presumably vacant second floor. Making her way up the creaky stairs, and into a darkened bedroom, Karen is about to set the plot through a series of flashbacks and flash-forwards, this film tells of horrible events that happen in a house and forever stains the place to the point where anyone and everyone who enters is cursed and will eventually be claimed by the ghosts who inhabit the place. The movie claims the Japanese believe if a person dies in a fit of rage, their spirit continues to haunt the living.
The acting by Sarah Michelle Gellar during the movie was good and the rest of the acting isn’t bad either, there really wasn’t any actor that didn’t do a good job fulfilling his or her part. The films special effects are also pretty good, they are also very freighting as well. The best thing about the movie and what really makes the movie so scary is that it has some great cinematography. The shots look good, and there are a great number of shots in the movie. The scenes are weird and a little outrageous at times from the repeated gruesome images of a bloodied woman, depictions of suicides, murders, to the disfigured body parts, but I do like how the film does fit the disjointed scenes together, it leaves your imagination filling in the holes far better than the camera can. This movie mange’s to scare the audience not only with the visual aspect but also with the use of surround sound of creaking stairways, scary music, slowly opened doors and so much more. The film gives you all the surprises and scares you can handle in one movie. That is what I like most about the movie.