🪦 The Grudge (2020): You Get a Curse! You Get a Curse! Everyone Gets a Curse! 🪦

🎬 Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers, shall we?

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📌 Disclaimer Before We Begin
This review is for the 2020 American remake/sequel/whatever-the-hell-this-is. Not the original Japanese Ju-On film, because truth be told… I’ve never seen the Japanese original. We’re strictly judging this ghostly mess.

Oh, and note: this film and then Candyman go on to have the same issue where they trunk the curse into a STD, just why?


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📖 Plot Rundown
The story jumps through three disconnected timelines between 2004 and 2006. It starts when Fiona Landers (Tara Westwood), a caregiver returning from Japan (where she worked in the original cursed house), brings the curse home to her suburban Pennsylvania house. Then she kills her family and herself.

Cue the ghostly curse spreading like bad vibes and food poisoning.

Years later, Detective Muldoon (Andrea Riseborough), a single mom and new transfer, starts looking into a pattern of bizarre deaths that all connect to the same creepy house. Her partner Detective Goodman (Demián Bichir) refuses to go near it. Smart man.

Meanwhile, other timelines follow a real estate couple (John Cho and Betty Gilpin) trying to sell the haunted home while dealing with a pregnancy crisis, and an older man (Frankie Faison) trying to care for his terminally ill wife (Lin Shaye) with help from a cheerful assisted suicide consultant (Jacki Weaver).

As the film lurches to its finale, Muldoon thinks she’s safe after burning the house down… but surprise! The curse tags along like a passive-aggressive roommate and snatches her anyway. Roll credits.


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👥 Character Rundown:

👩‍✈️ Detective Muldoon – Andrea Riseborough: Final girl who tries her best but gets haunted anyway.

👮‍♂️ Detective Goodman – Demián Bichir: The only character with brain cells.

😵‍💫 Detective Wilson – William Sadler: Loses his mind after investigating the curse.

🧳 Fiona Landers – Tara Westwood: Brings the curse home from Japan. Bad souvenir.

🏚 Peter & Nina Spencer – John Cho & Betty Gilpin: Realtors, cursed while pregnant.

🛌 Faith & William Matheson – Lin Shaye & Frankie Faison: Terminally haunted couple.

💉 Lorna Moody – Jacki Weaver: The assisted suicide lady who gets a lot more than she signed up for.



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👍 Pros:

Lin Shaye is great, as always.

Some creepy visuals if you squint hard enough.

The idea of overlapping stories could have worked in better hands.


👎 Cons:

There is no Kayako. The ghost is now… whoever dies violently?

This turns the curse into an airborne virus—everyone gets haunted like it’s the flu.

The gore feels like shock bait (rotting corpses, chopped-off fingers, maggots galore).

Multiple timelines = multiple messes.

The film replaces supernatural dread with jump scares and moldy bathtub goo.

Tries to copy The Ring and Hereditary at once but fails at both.

And biggest con? ❗This movie has the audacity to say, “You know what? Kayako doesn’t matter. YOU could be the new ghost! And you! And you!”
→ No. Absolutely not. This isn’t Oprah’s Curse Giveaway. Kayako was iconic. This? This is a haunted shrug.



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💀 Final Thoughts:
The Grudge (2020) doesn’t understand what made the original 2004 remake terrifying. It throws away Kayako, the spine-crawling croak, and the eerie slow dread… and replaces it with jump cuts, dead fish eyes, and trauma metaphors.

You came for a Grudge movie, but instead you get an anthology of miserable people being sad in dim lighting, occasionally interrupted by a ghost who looks like she smells bad.

This is the point where the franchise stops being scary and starts becoming tired. And gross. And pointless.


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🎯 Rating:
1/10 🪦🧼👎
This ain’t a curse. This is a mildew infection wearing a trench coat and calling itself horror.


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⚠️ Spoiler Warning – Stop here if you haven’t seen the film
Below lies a graveyard of spoilers, ghost plot twists, and disappointment.


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🔪 Spoiler-Filled Ending Breakdown:
Muldoon thinks she’s free. She doused the cursed house in gasoline and watched it burn. Life is calm again… until she sees water dripping from the ceiling.

Her son is in bed. All seems well. Until it’s not.

She goes to the bathroom, and there it is—the black sludge in the tub. The hair. The sound. Kayako? A ghost? Someone. She screams. Her son comes in. Everything’s fine.

Psych.

She hugs her son—but wait, his face shifts. It’s not her son. It’s the ghost. THE ghost.
It grabs her. She’s pulled into the darkness.

Fade to black.

What did we learn? Nothing. Except that the curse never ends, and we all suffer when you reboot things without a plan.