The Grudge (2020)

When someone dies in the grip of a powerful rage, a curse is born. The curse gathers in the place of death. Those who encounter it will be consumed by its fury. Hello, Sydney. It's your killer host. My name is Parker, your resident horror fanatic. I'm Caroline, Scaredy Scream Queen. I'm Ian, Scary Movie Skeptic. And welcome to. What's your favorite scary movie? What's your favorite scary movie is a horror film podcast where we're on a journey to find our favorite scary movie one at a time. Whether you hate them or love them, join us and discover yours. Spoilers ahead, so plan your movie screening every weekend before the episode release. Um, special PSA for anyone. Go into the movie theaters these days.

Ooh. Respect the other people around you. That's all I have to say. Oh man. R-E-S-P-E. C T T C. Yeah, before even getting to the movie, what a time we had at the theater last night. I just want everyone to picture this. The three of us. Perfect seats picked out by Parker. Well, thank you. Thank you for that. It's not hard to uh click on the middle. This old man comes and plops right down in front of me, who's sitting in the middle, whips out not one, but two lobster sandwiches that just stink up the entire theater. And I look down at him, and his thumbnails are probably an inch long. The scariest thing of the night.

Terrifying. Oh yeah. It wasn't just that because I'm guilty of, you know, taking in a stinky burrito or something. Let me continue though. Okay, you continue. Let me continue. Then his friend, I'm assuming his best friend, Tate, starts calling him. And you know why I know that it was Tate? Because his brightness was on full the entire movie. Well, I'm he steps out to take this call with Tate and then comes back in to finish his second lobster sandwich. It ain't our movie experience. Oh my god. Well, and I would like to say that for people who are like, kids can't even sit through a whole movie without being on their phones. It's not kids. Everyone in theaters are on their phones.

Old people. Now, but that guy was not the only problem. Hecklers behind us. Hecklers behind us. And sometimes a rambunctious crowd in a horror movie can be fun. Um, but this was not a fun crowd. In fact, there was a scene that was perhaps the sole emotional scene of this movie, and a woman starts cackling like it's scared. Like I just the cackle where you want people to know that you think something is funny and that they should too. And I was just like, what the hell? And then the last few minutes of this piece of cinema, and a huge crowd of people comes in the door and starts like yelling. I had no idea what was going on in the theater.

Yelling before they realized that there was a theater full of people watching a movie and left. And then when we looked back at the screen, ending credits. And it was potentially one of the most important parts of the movie. Oh my god. I gathered what happened, so I can fill you in if you need me to, but I was just like, It wasn't groundbreaking going on in this theater. It was crazy. Saturday night, man. So anyway, we went to go see the grudge. And clearly we got a grudge ourselves. So that theater cursed with our rage. If anyone murdered me right in this very moment, Jewan would be there because I am enraged with these people.

And before we even get started, if you need a little background on Jewan, the Japanese film that The Grudge is based on, well, you better guess what? We already did it. And you can go look up patreon.com slash scary moviepod to get all of our thoughts and insights on the OG, Jewan the Grudge. Check it out. So The Grudge, obviously, year is 2020. First horror film of the year, but also first film I saw in theaters this year. So, you know. Not my first. Ooh, what'd you see in theaters? Very similar, though. Um Little Women. Little Women. Oh, you saw that in January? Yeah. Or oh yeah, yeah. You're lying. Oh man, we're starting off not great.

So, The Grudge 2020, coming in hot in theaters, January 3rd, written and directed by Nicholas Pesch. Nicholas Pesch is also the writer-director of two good movies, if you could believe it. Name 'em. Wow. The Eyes of My Mother from 2016 and Piercing from 2018. Piercing, pretty cool movie. Never seen them. Uh well, I mean, I gather you're not the horror type, so I wouldn't have expected you to. In this movie, Leading the Disappointment, we have that hot. Not that hot. Uh Andrea Riseboro, who plays Detective Muldoon. I love it when I just love when you say things like that. Andrea Riseboro. That's me trying to sound it out into one word. Like when you're always shocked by the names.

What? What is I've never heard Riseboro in one word. Okay. Anyways, um, Andrea, good old Andrea, was in Oblivion from 2013 and Birdman from 2014, as well as Mandy from 2018. A lot of one-word movie titles here. Well, Birdman actually has a very long title. I just figured we don't need it. People know what that movie is. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We also have Damien Bischer. Bisher? I can't. Um, who plays the role of Goodman? Is this a he? Who's Goodman? Yeah, uh, he was the other detective. He was just listed as Goodman and not Detective Goodman. See, I didn't even latch on to the characters here. The mustached man. I was like, ooh, nice mustache. Yeah.

The mustached man was in Alien Covenant from 2017 and also The Nun from 2018, which looked really scary. Those trailers. Don't keep that jar of worms closed. Scary. Um, John Cho, who was probably the highlight of this movie for me, played the role of Peter Spencer. Curious. He was in Harold and Kumar films, the recent Star Trek films, and searching from 2018. Parker also has a nice little note in here that says, I wouldn't say no, winking face. That's why he was the highlight of the movie for me. We got some shirtless action from him. Yeah, he seems like a nice guy, you know. Yeah, sure. Lynn Shay plays the role of Faith Matheson. Oh, yes.

For me, the highlight. Pretty much the only thing that this film has going for it. Uh, she was in A Nightmare on Elm Street from 1984, and also the Insidious films. I thought she looked familiar. The IMDB summary reads, quote, A House is cursed by a vengeful ghost that dooms. It feels like it's paste. Like A House is cursed by a vengeful ghost. I like that. Read it like that. The IMDB summary reads, quote, A house is cursed. Okay. The IMDB summary reads, quote, A house is cursed by a vengeful ghost. One eternity later. The IMDB summary reads, quote, A house is cursed by a vengeful ghost that dooms those who enter it with a violent death.

That was it? That was what you were trying to get through? Uh and also, like, you know, straight to the point. Got it out. Thanks a lot, IMDB. The Rotten Tomatoes score as of the 4th of January, 2020. It may have changed by the time you're hearing this. The critic score is a 1616%. Oh yeah. Audience score eight. Not eighty. The critic score is quote dull and derivative. The rebooted grudge wastes a talented cast and filmmaker on watered down scares that may leave viewers nursing grievances of their own. Yeah. Wait, what was the beginning of that? Dull and derivative. No, it wastes a wasted count a cast. It also wasted an hour and a half of my time.

Something I will say is it's true. Looking at the list here, I was like, wow, there's some cool people that I don't think would sign in, sign on to just anything. True. And even this writer-director, I was like, he's made cool stuff. And then watching this, you know, sometimes you watch something that's like, ugh, the director can only do so much with that script, or ugh, that script can only do so much good when it's in Lee's hands. He did both. It's all bad. I just kept thinking, like, the only good part about this is the premise, which we knew from watching Juan. Other than that, it was like the possibilities were endless, and I had really high hopes for this, and it just came crashing down.

I would even debate that the premise isn't good, but I think the premise is good. I think they could have gone a lot of really different directions, but they stayed safe, and I think that's what made everything so bad. Well, take that back. I I like the premise. Yeah, and I mean the premise is also so simple. Like ghosts, literally, it's just haunting. Step into a ghost, get haunted. Yeah, that is the premise. That is so many things. And I even was frustrated that um, I guess to start with the beginning of the movie, it's about a woman who brings the curse from Japan, like trying to hint at the movies that have come before, to America.

And so I was confused from the beginning because I was like, wait, she's not dying, or her family's not dying in like a rageful way. She becomes possessed by this ghost and kills her family. To me, that doesn't make sense. Like a new curse would not be taking hold of her house because it would end with her family dying, wouldn't it? I don't think so. I think a new Jew on would have to take place for it to be killing all these people. Yeah. I could see I yeah. So that's like in the beginning, though, it's like this curse will never go away and once but it's tied to the place. That's like saying the detective when she goes back home to her house with her kid, like that's like saying that she has now Jew on her house.

Because in the Jew on the grudge that we watched, you know, the ghosts followed people out of the house, but the curse didn't latch on to any other place except the house and the people. And so from the beginning, I was like, this already doesn't make sense. And so, like, just so many easy fixes where it's like, why couldn't we have seen like a new crime happen in America? You know? I listened to an interview with the director, and Lin She was there as well, and he was talking about how like that the curse isn't just Japanese. Like he was like, There's a Japanese curse, and they have their makeup, which he said was inspired by Kabuki.

So now he wanted to make the Americ what the curse would look like in America, and that's why that he said the the ghosts looked the way they did in this movie, because he thinks Americans are obsessed with like true crime, so he wanted it to look very literal. Um well, I thought they looked really stupid, but anyway, whatever. But to me, just all of that doesn't make sense having seen the movie. I was like, no, you didn't do that. You were clearly like, here's everything from Japan, I'm just gonna pull it over and just set it in America. Nothing about the setting worked for me. The ghosts I thought looked really silly and like kind of like Curse of Law Yoronae, if you listen to that episode, they all just looked kind of like computer people.

It looks like a bad haunted house to me. Yes. Some of the scares were like literally like people running out and being like like right in the camera. And I was like the bathroom scene when she turns off the light and he's like standing there. I was like, come on. I literally didn't flinch for like when she said goes to her son's room and she was like, Are you okay? And he was in bed, and then he gets out of bed and goes through the shadow, and when he runs out of the shadow, it's the girl. It literally like stopped running and was like wiggling her arms at the camera. I was just like, What? And some of the blood looked so cheap.

I was just like, What is happening? Yeah. It it was truly a bizarre experience. And listen in next week for our next episode. Yeah. No, I actually have a lot to say about why I think this movie does not work and how it could have worked. Maybe. How it could have worked would have just been anything except what it was, honestly. Because I think it would be really easy to make a good movie off of the grudge. It's a scary concept. Yeah. You need one element to make a good grudge movie. Fun. And I had no fun watching this movie. The thing that confused me is that it's almost like the parts that would have led you to believe that this was actually gonna be a good scary movie were done in the past and also included in the trailer of this movie.

Like the bathtub upstairs, you know, the hand coming out of the head in the shower, which is also like we've seen. Yeah. And that's why I watched this trailer and I was like, I am gonna shit my pants during this movie. It's gonna be so scary. I agree. The trailer is really good. And actually, last night I was texting my friend about this movie. I identified five different scenes in that trailer that did not happen in the movie. What? A lot of the stuff that I was looking forward to didn't happen. Wow. So I was kind of upset about cheap. Cheap tricks, grudge. Yeah, I also think like I think they could have done a lot of simple things.

Or like I think the story had potential. You can you can explain. You can explain. Parker's trying to d suppress my opinion. No, no, no. Explain the opinion. I want to hear it. I think the the outline I just don't feel like they went deep into character development. Oh yeah, I agree with that. Like when most specifically, like we have Detective Muldoon. Detective Muldoon. First of all, you don't know she's a detective right away, and then all of a sudden she's in a police station. Like, I don't even remember how it started. Well, it was so confusing. She was with her son, and they were doing the whole, what do we do when we're scared? We close our eyes and count to five.

And she was like, I know this works to be true because I'm a police officer. She did say that. But yeah, I just feel like they did no character development. Yeah, and I totally agree with that. I think that Detective Muldoon is the only character that we spend like a substantial amount of time with. Right. And that's all the time we spend with her is like her on a mission. And none of it's really exploring anything about her. Everyone else in this film is completely, you know, extraneous. And like, we know Betty Gilpin is pregnant. That that's all she is good for is just we know pregnant women shouldn't die. No good. That's the only reason she exists.

And just stuff like that where everybody is just this very, like, very surface level, like, oh, you shouldn't want them to die, but you know, whatever they will. Um doesn't work. So there are five or four, there are four main storylines in this movie. You've got Detective Muldoon investigating, and that includes her investigating the previous investigation done by Detective Wilson. Then you have the Landers family, who is the first family in the house. You have the Spencer family, which is the realtors selling the house to the Landers, and you have the Matheson family who buys the house after the Landers. So there there are quite a few storylines happening, but that's something that happens in the other Juan movies.

You know, they're playing with time and different um storylines kind of interweaving. The thing that I liked about that in Juwan is that it there's mystery to it. You're trying to piece together when things are happening. There's no mystery to that in this movie. Yeah, there's big block letters, and the characters flat out talk about the other storylines happening instead of there just being like subtle hints here and there. And something that really bothered me about that is we have very explicitly stated on screen this happens between 2004 and 2006, the entire events of the movie. Why does everything look like it's the fucking 70s? The cars, they're all old. The TV sets are those little box TVs that you have to click the big buttons on.

I was like, what the hell is happening here? 2006, it's not that long ago. Even the color palette, everything was brown. I just I was getting frustrated. I didn't that didn't bother me as much. There was one flip phone, and I was like, finally, the two early 2000s. It was infuriating to me. I guess let me tell you what really doesn't work for me about this movie, and then I think we can talk more easily about the other storylines. So this is the 13th Juan movie to exist. At this point, 13 too many. Oh. Yeah. No, no, no, no. I like it. Maybe like 12 too many. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um 12 and a half. Um but at this point, like, we know what it is.

And even if you haven't seen a Juan movie before, the movie starts with what we said in the intro that explains to you what the curse is. So you know what it is. This movie is a police investigation movie where instead of them uncovering clues, you just know the entire movie. There is nothing to solve. That is why this movie is so fucking boring. Because it starts promising you that you will see three violent deaths, at least, or three sets of violent deaths. And instead of just showing us these three violent deaths, it's trying to do this thing where it's being sassy and teasing us by being like, oh, police investigation. Not only is she investigating a crime that is not even hers to investigate, it has nothing to do with her, but that someone previously has investigated and figured out is fruitless to investigate.

So you're watching people investigate something that is not investable. Yeah. It is impossible to investigate. So you know that it is fruitless from the beginning. And you know what? In the end, it was it was worthless. Like there was nothing to uncover. So you're watching all of this happen, and there's no clue ever uncovered. And even the deaths when they happen, it's not even like a big event. Like they happen so quickly, and like just like, all right, it's done. There it goes. Even like Mr. Matheson, where he's just sitting or laying on the floor. Yeah, like that. Or I'm not saying the I want to see a pregnant woman get like cut up, but like you just it flashes away and then it comes back and she's just laying in a puddle of blood.

So it's like they're giving us the things that don't matter, and then they're not focusing on like the stuff that we paid to see, you know? Because this movie I know that like sometimes we discuss like there's there's horror in the mystery of what happened, but honestly, like in a movie of this sophistication, um very little horror just like show us, you know, give us something to be scared of. And like we said, the jump scares, it's like they're just jump scares peppered throughout that have no purpose. But like they're just keeping us like, oh, are you awake still? Yeah, medium jump scares. Yeah. Ugh. Let's go ahead and just talk about the families because I think that that's where we can get some conversation.

And then I have some other grievances. Chronologically, the first family to die is the Landers family. That includes mother, father, and son. And the movie actually starts or and daughter. Sorry. And the movie actually starts with Fiona Landers in Japan with from the first second, the most ridiculous thing I've ever seen. The trash bags. The trash bags. So a breathing trash bag. I was kind of like, oh, what's gonna happen? And then there are just like people painted white all around her. Yeah, pretty hard. Oh my god, it was so bad. So she went home early because she started seeing the grudge. She started seeing the grudge, she got out of there, which, like, good course of action.

She just doesn't know that anybody who sees the grudge is dead. Um, and then we actually don't see her death until the very end when Detective Muldoon is having a vision and she sees that she drowns the daughter in a bathtub, and then would she stab her artists? Yeah, and then she stabbed herself and it looked like something from like a Resident Evil video game, which are cool video games, but like this is not an animated movie. You know, you see her silhouette and she stabs and you see like cartoon blood start spewing out of her. Yeah. There are all these like little like things that they're doing throughout the movie to try and be cheeky, where it's like the little girl's nose starts like spewing blood, and you don't know until the end that's because the mom is like slamming the girl's face on the floor of the bathtub while she's drowning her.

It just looks like she had a nosebleed though. Oh, I didn't put that together. Yeah, she is just having nosebleed, but I think the movie's trying to be like, oh, foreshadowing. Everybody get excited. And then it's just like, you know. Yeah. I don't even care. So Landers fan, that's probably the people we spend the least time with, even though the father is there throughout the whole movie. I honestly did not know who that ghost was the whole movie. I didn't either. He like showed up and I was like, oh yeah, like a creepy Frankenstein man. Okay, sure. Oh, I knew. Uh, you did? Yeah. Well, I I pieced it together eventually, but I was I pieced together the last name, but I was like, is that the guy I saw at the beginning?

I thought that it was Wilson. I did too. For a little bit. Guys, you gotta pay attention to details. Yeah, the nuance in this movie. Also, that scene when he's in prison. Well sad. Terrifying. But like in a bad way. Oh, I was like, excuse me. No, not in a good terror way. There were a few gross out things in this movie that were kind of like when he shot himself in the mouth, and you could just see like the side of his face was gone. That was kind of nice. The hands where she cut her hands up. Yeah, that yeah, that was good. But then, like when Wilson had his eyeballs come out, you could tell like there was no flowing blood.

It was just all painted on his face, and it looked bad. And there's a man with huge craters in his face and blood, and the guy next to me feels the need to point at the screen and goes, Oh, it's his it's the eyeballs. Look, look, the eyeballs. And I was just like, excuse me. The other family, uh uh, the Spencer family, the realtors, they try and give us like this little emotional uh like on a YouTube video. If this was a YouTube video, it would have like asterisk so emotional or something. You know when people do that? Yeah. Yeah, that was that storyline. Family, husband and wife wanting to have a baby. Uh, they gave us the disease that the baby had a high likelihood of being born with, but it was some sort of uh something I wouldn't know in the it wasn't a disease, it was like a like a learning distress.

Do you know what it was? It was it was um acronym, and I did not know what the acronym stood for. Oh, I didn't hear that. He said like it's L T or S. There's three letters, and they were like, oh, it has like a 90% chance of being born with this. Also, I know this is skipping a little bit, but same same storyline when she's on the phone with him and is like, I I never wanted to have a kid. And then that is the moment when the crowd went crazy in the three. Yeah, they started laughing. Yeah, it was so bizarre, but yeah, that's what I was getting at. This this whole storyline is for us to have like an emotional moment, and yes, I was frustrated that the crowd was upset, or that the crowd was upsetting me, but at the same time, like, do you think it would have actually affected us emotionally?

That's kind of disturbing. Like they're laughing with like gusto at like her deciding to not wanting to have a kid. Yeah, no, no, no, she was deciding she wanted it. She says they started laughing when he's she said, I don't want to have it, I never wanted to have kids or something. Yeah, well, she says, I never wanted to have children, but something like, I'll love this baby with all of my children. Which like okay, you can laugh like a chuckle at like uh-huh, what it's like to be a parent, but then it was just like Well, I honestly think it would have been like a more interesting like story element if she was like, I've never wanted to have children and I still don't, and I'm crying because I think we should like get rid of it.

I don't know. I think that would have just been more interesting because instead it's just like I'm a mother. And I was like, Cool. I don't know, they die in a not very exciting way. How did he even oh he went into uh John Cho hidden a closet and then he's peeking through the the slats and uh there's a ghost behind him. But then he goes home and kills his wife and then scissors and then dunks himself in the bathtub. He's already dead, but it looks like he's like washing his hair, that's all we see. Yeah, I mean I guess that could have been him being possessed and like reenacting the original crime of drowning the daughter.

Melinda. Melinda, yes. Do you know anyone named Melinda? I hope never to. Yes, Melinda. It's a creepy name. Last family that we're dealing with, and actually the family whose storyline I probably enjoyed the most was the Matheson family. And this is Lynn Shea is out of her mind. She's dealing with, what would you say, dementia, Alzheimer's, some sort of lack of well no, she has cancer, I think. Cancer. Yeah, they have they have cancer, and then they moved to the house so that they could be close to the hospital, and then that's when she started acting crazy. Isn't dementia technically a form of cancer? I don't know. With like I'm no doctor. If you're having medical issues, please go see a medical professional.

Anyway, she's having some sort of degenerative mind situation uh where she can no longer care for herself. And her husband has called a lady, Lorna Mooney. I wrote that down because I was like, hell yeah, that's actually a really cool name. Lorna Moody, excuse me. Moody. I know, Lorna Moody. I was like, what is this? Harry Potter? That's a good name. So Lorna shows up because she's going to do a little assisted suicide thing, which actually, you know, another hot topic. It sounded really nice though. Did you hear her explaining that? Yeah, she's like, we put a hood over her head with like five seconds and you're done. Five seconds. But the thing is, is that she has to have the um presence of mind to agree to it and some sort of she was saying she had to have some sort of physical ability to carry part of it out herself.

I think she had to do the mask thing. Oh, maybe dementia due to cancer treatment comes on gradually over time and usually after treatment is completed. There you go. There's the facts. So I would say dementia, but she is clearly gone, and so Lorna does not agree to do the procedure. And in a ridiculous turn of events, she's like Lorna and Mr. Matheson get it on in the back. Yeah, I hope not. I don't want to think about that. That's a lot of uh folds. Because they're old. Oh my god. Uh but anyway. Stop. Anyway, in a strange turn of events, Lorna's like, why don't I stay the night here? Wink. I guess that's true. And on top of that, she's like, Oh, you're paying for me to come all the way down here and wasting my time.

Why don't I go buy you groceries on top of that? So she goes buys some groceries, has some strange occurrences in a grocery store because that was a scene that I really wanted in there. And then Wilson's in the front yard. Yeah, Wilson's in the front yard and she makes some dinner. And what is good about the making dinner is that I guess Myth Ms. Myth of Matheson. Mrs. Matheson sees her chopping some carrots and is like, huh, I should chop something later. And those are her fingers. After she's killed her husband. Um, and then Lorna runs off and dies. Um, and it's not that exciting. Also, okay, when they find Lorna Moody's car and they're inspecting their very old car, 70s.

Yeah, but she's also like burnt up or something. I don't know what's going on with her body. One of the detectives says, certainly looks like someone else was in there with her. And then we actually see the car crash and she just runs into a tree. Well, I think there's a gun with her. Yeah, there was a gun. I know, but like her the way that we saw her die was not any more abnormal than a normal like car crash. And then we get this body that looked like it's like crisped up and she's screaming for help. That doesn't happen over a couple months. I don't know. Her skin was like bubbled up. Have you ever seen a dead animal?

One, her skin was already not in great condition. I think if we're gonna put holes in in something that was a bunny hole. I was expecting a more grotesque death of well they tried to make it grotesque by having this really strange thing where you see like a millisecond of her arm snapping in the car crash. It was so bizarre that they would have that as like a point where they show you it specifically on her corpse, and then it was almost like they just couldn't make it happen while it was in the car crash. So you kind of see it, but it looks ridiculous. Yeah, but that's the part that it because I when I saw her corpse, I was like, oh, we're gonna get a good freaking imagery around how this happened, and then it was just like, nope, done.

She's done. Yeah. Uh, and actually, so then this is the part that I actually like is all of the aftermath with Lynn Shea. So Detective Muldoon goes and sees Lyn Shea in her house, and a snippet that I picked up from the uh interview I listened to with Nicholas Pesh and Lin Shea, I thought this was going to be like a thing in the movie, and it was not. But she's covered in shit because apparently she's been eating her own poop in the time that her husband's died. Uh, Mrs. Matheson. Uh-huh. Because apparently she can't feed herself, so she started eating her own poop. I thought we were gonna blood covered in. Yeah, well, I wouldn't have guessed, I would have guessed blood if I was just seeing that.

I thought it was like vomit or something. Yeah, I know. I want to see in of her just eating poop. Yeah, don't promise me something. Also, also, um, Mr. Matheson's body was in a chair when the detective came in, but when they found him dead, he was on the kitchen floor. I mean, she could have put him in that chair. She had she can't even feed herself. She had whole months. I don't know. That's a plot hole right there. That's it. Maybe the ghosts did it. Ooh. But like the TV was on. Like he was like positioned like he was watching TV. The the TV turned on while she was at the house. The ghost clearly did the TV at least.

I don't know. And then Lin Shea has my favorite death, where the one good death is she throws herself off a staircase, smacks her head on the way down, and then explodes into a beautiful uh shower of blood. That was the one death I was like, alright, I can get behind that. And then, of course, we know the movie acts like this was a big twist, but I mean, Detective Muldoon goes to burn down the house in a little homage to Jew on the grudge, and then she thinks that she has survived, and then the movie ends with the school bus coming, and she's like, Hey son, school bus is here, and she's having a sweet moment with him, and then you see she's hugging the son, and the actual son like walks out of his room behind her and is like, bye mom, going to school, and then she, you know, pulls the fake son away from her and it's little girl, and then a woman comes and slams her head on the ground, and then you watch from the outside of the house to who's Detective Muldoon's head on the ground, and then you watch from outside the house as you hear screaming inside the house again.

We don't get much of a death, and um credits credits start. Does the kid hear the no, the because the kid left for the school bus. So the kid's gonna find her when he gets home, and forever be scarred. So the movie's like, oh, big twist, we tricked you, but it's like again, we've seen, you know, 12 of these at this point. We know nobody can escape it because it's not something you can investigate and solve. It is a supernatural curse. Roll credits. I know. This movie thinks that it's being so clever, and it's really not. Do you think they like signed a contract to do this movie and then they're like crap, I don't actually want to know.

No, this interview Nicholas Pash said, like, I've been writing this movie for like two years. Two years wasted. He was like, I came at this movie as a Juan fanboy, and he was talking about how he would like to do another one set in the past or other ones set in other countries. And I was just like, listening to this interview, I was like, wow, this movie's going to be so interesting and like finally a meeting of this air quotes elevated horror that people are really into these days, and something a little more, you know, fun. Not that, you know, like those movies in the elevated horror uh fad can't be fun. But um, I was like, oh, this will be interesting, and just nothing about it was pulled off.

He described it, uh, he compared it to the haunting of Hill House and Hereditary uh meets Juan, and I was just like, oh wow, this is gonna be such a ambitious movie, and it just wasn't. There are a few things from this interview that I wanted to point out. Lin Shea said repeatedly that so imagine we have not seen the movie that we just saw for a moment. Easy. Yes. And then listen to these points that she made because I think these are interesting points for a movie. These really didn't happen in this movie. So she described this movie as a beautiful See, already reading the I took these notes before I watched the movie, and now they're all trash.

She called it beautifully constructed, but whatever. Um, a beautifully constructed ode to rage. And she was saying, especially in 2020, when everybody is to some extent enraged about something. So she says that there the stories of three women, which actually, like, what three women is she talking about? There's a lot of women in this movie. Three women who are vulnerable because of certain sadnesses in their lives, and she says, quote, rage attacks people who are vulnerable because it gives them power. And so she was she was bringing up interesting points. That has nothing to do with the premise of the movie. I know, but wouldn't that be interesting to have a horror movie about I mean, I guess there are horror movies like this, but to have this horror movie be about how rage and this curse could be exploitive to these women who are all going through things, things that aren't well explored in this movie.

But I think that there are points where it's like, oh, you have like the nugget, but nothing was expanded upon or explored. See, this is what's interesting to me because I feel like all of these plot lines, she is right. There are things in each one where people could have been enraged. Mm-hmm. But they never fully explore that because it has nothing to do with the premise of the movie. Yeah. Well, not the none of the characters besides Muldoon are explored, and Muldoon isn't even a very interesting character. She's someone who's her husband has died, and so like, um But there we don't see any emotion from her. Uh uh. And Detective Goodman says he says it all in one sentence.

He says, You're looking for something to occupy your time, don't do it with this. And that could have been the whole extent of her storyline right there. That's all we needed. But instead, she spends the next hour looking into this fruitless case. That's just what I'm hung up on is that the whole movie was worthless, and we knew it was worthless from the beginning because this storyline has nowhere to go. Ugh. I have one more bummer thing that's been bothering me before we wrap it up. These ghosts in this movie, as much as he claims that he is a Juwan super fan, these are not Juan ghosts. These are clearly like supposed they look like Samara from the ring.

They don't look like the grudge ghosts. They don't even look that scary. Well, it's not about scary, but Samara is, you know, she or Sidako, if you're looking at the Ringu, the original, you know, it's the girl with the hair that hangs in front of her face and she crawls out of the TV. Um, and she does have a very similar look to Kayako or the uh grudge characters, but the grudge character is like you can see their face. Their hair is out of their face, and they still crawl in creepy ways and stuff and stuff like that. But the the little girl imagery that he keeps hitting on is not Jewan imagery, it's all Ringo imagery.

So it's like at least get your facts straight, you know? Mm-hmm. Alright. Let's wrap her up. What from the Grudge 2020 is your most memorable murder? I'm going to start. It's not even a murder. Well, I guess Juan murdered her. But Lyn Shea exploding into a fountain of blood was lovely. Same for me. Same. Wow. Oh, alright. Lin Shea, look at you. Thanks. On a scary scale. One out to five. How would you rate the grudge 2020? Two. Two. I would honestly give it a one and a half. I know we're not doing halves, but I I think you can't give it a one because grotesque things happen. But I don't want to give it a two.

I think conceptually this could be an upsetting movie if you're not used to meanness. Because it's a little cruel. Everyone dies, but like, you know, that's what you signed up for. Uh so one and a half from me. Would you give The Grudge 2020 a smash or a slash? Slash. Or slash. Whoa. Let's restate for class. Clarity what everyone's giving it. I would slash hard. Hard slash. Multiple slashes. Sorry. Like one of those murderers who goes in and they're like, you stabbed this person 14 times. Damn. Uh yeah, I'm also going to really slash this movie. Um, I honestly looking at the trailer was like, damn, January 3rd, we're starting off 2020 with what's going to be my favorite movie of the year.

Big disappointment. Did not happen. Huge. Big mistake. Huge. I don't know. It's one of those slashes where you just close your eyes. Is no one getting my pretty woman reference? Oh my god. So Nailbinder. What is your favorite scary movie? I am just begging the universe to give me another good one. Because my favorite scary movie still is The Shining. Rare exports. That's disappointing. Stuck in Christmas land, I see. Well, me too. Because mine is Black Christmas 1974. If you want to hear us not be negative Nancy's about Juwan, subscribe to our Patreon and you can hear the real episode about Juwan. There's some negative Nancy. But you know, you could subscribe to our Patreon where we're going to keep doing bonus episodes such as The Turning later this month.

Alright. Um, so next week on what's your favorite scary movie, we're going to throw it back just a little bit and watch an American werewolf in London. A bit of a lighter mood, so look forward to that one. I'm pretty excited. Oh. But until we transform under the moonlight next week, you should go over to Apple Podcasts and leave us a rating and a review, and you might just hear us scream your name over the airwaves. My name is Parker Heron. You can find me on Instagram, Twitter, Letterboxd, the slasher app at Parker Del Rey. My name is Caroline. You can find me on Instagram and Twitter. My goal is to be a little bit more active on that this year.

Oh, what a good goal. More social media! Wow. Said no one other than Caroline. Screen time. No, I'm really I'm my goal is to spend more time on social media. Listen to me. I have been trying to figure out freaking Twitter land for the past six years. And it's not that hard to figure out. I can never get behind it. So I'm actually like putting effort into it. So you can find me on Instagram and Twitter at Carol Manifesto. Wow. Yeah, you can find me on Twitter at Ian Hoyt. Mmm. And you can find all three of us. You could even interact with us, send us a message. Please test my skills. Use something. We'll send you selfies.

Yeah. Uh on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram at ScarymoviePod. Another way to contact us, easy peasy lemon squeezy, would be scarymoviepod at gmail.com. And of course, the home base for all things, what's your favorite scary movie? Is scarymoviepod.com. And if you can't get enough, because who could, then go over to patreon.com slash scary moviepod. Shut it. And for just a couple of bucks, you can get see, you're wrong. Finish each other's sandwiches. Sexts. No, no, no. Oh, please no. Um, you could get bonus episodes, you're gonna get hot newsletters from us, all sorts of stuff. In fact, we got some good Instagram stories on the close friends feed from tonight. So you could be seeing those.