Grisly ghost story lacks plot; not for tweens.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Dec 28, 2010

| Original Score: 3/5 | Apr 1, 2006

It's mechanical moviemaking, but when it works you're likely to quiver, cower and leap with fright.

| Original Score: 3/5 | Jan 26, 2005

Shimizu understands it is the unknown and the unseen that's scariest, resorting to gurgled growls and passing glimpses of greasy-haired demons to illicit shrieks and shouts from a terrified theatre.

| Original Score: 3/4 | Nov 6, 2004

| Original Score: C+ | Nov 6, 2004

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Nov 6, 2004

It's no more impressive than hiding in the dark and shouting 'Boo!' when someone walks into a room.

Full Review | Oct 26, 2004

It's just not the kind of frightening that stays with you very long, unless of course someone decides to make the same movie . . . yet again.

| Oct 22, 2004

It's enough to send you home with jiggly knees and a tummy ache.

| Oct 22, 2004

Almost every single one of the American characters has maybe a third of the personality of the ghosts that haunt them, so you begin to think the grudge itself is less a curse than a perfectly reasonable eviction strategy.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 22, 2004

It's refreshing to see a PG-13 horror film that aims for good old-fashioned spookiness.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Oct 22, 2004

As it turns out, there is such a thing as a horror film with too much mindless killing.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 22, 2004

Mostly, it's a tepid affair.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 22, 2004

More than anything, The Grudge suggests that it's time for Shimizu to move on.

| Original Score: 2/5 | Oct 22, 2004

The Grudge is all about fright. It's not about mystery, characterization or perverse amusement, all of which can turn horror into something more.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 22, 2004

There are so many events here but no real story. Perhaps that is what's making the drowned kabuki ghost so irate: She's desperate to find a coherent script.

Full Review | Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 22, 2004

Anyone who has ever seen a horror flick will know where this one's going every inch of the way.

Full Review | Original Score: C- | Oct 22, 2004

We need to care about Karen. That we never quite do isn't scary. It's merely disappointing.

Full Review | Oct 22, 2004

I eventually lost all patience. The movie may have some subterranean level on which the story strands connect and make sense, but it eluded me.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Oct 22, 2004

The trouble with Shimizu's impressionistic approach is that it doesn't entrench you deep enough inside anybody's head or put you far enough behind anyone's point of view for the scares to really work.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Oct 22, 2004