Movie Man Darian Watching All Night Long

The Grudge (2020) 

This film is horrible! The moment I heard this film would be coming out I was so afraid of what the result would be. As their have been 4 of these films and it’s the same plot over and over it’s a demonic spirit that haunts the new people who live in the house and is that what they do here? Yes it is. The biggest problem this film has is its lack of ability to push this franchise into new direction that brings something fresh it is so bland and most of all it is boring. I never thought I could predict a horror film so terribly accurately as I did with the Grudge 2020. 

Firstly, The film lacks any originality to do something new. The film retreads familiar ground and uses all the horror tropes in the book as well they may as well of thrown in the kitchen sink while they were at it. The film uses every single stereotype that the horror genre is known for and made fun of for. It has the masculine mans man that has a dead wife and emotionally closed off then you have the mother who’s father died and has a kid and then move into the new demonic house that haunts them both.  That description I just said is the whole premises of this film’s characters its not a spoiler as you see that exact copy and paste of horror characters in a ton of horror films. The nerve this film has to use all the tropes that we have seen before and make it look like it is something different is so lazy the only thing I will say was at all creative was the ability to tell the story for one of the side plots from the police’s point of view which I did think was interesting to a degree. Which leads me to my second point 

Secondly, This film is so messy narratively with way to much going on, The film as I mentioned is focused on a mother and her son moving into a haunted place and being haunted now their is so many other side plots attached to this main plot. Their is her partner who is this mans mans who is trying to get her let it go and he has his own character arc that seems actually interesting despite all the tropes that come with his character. His character arc goes nowhere that also is lazily done  and so is the other couple in this film that attempts to have more emotional impact then it actually gives off which is just poorly structured and awkwardly forced moments that try to make you invested in all these characters and their backstories and none of it works because the characters are shallow which makes you not care at all about any of the supporting characters involved. To a degree I cared about the central character and her relationship with her son but even that was bashed horribly with the writing as it is pushed to the Background of the story and cares more about the investigation aspect instead of focusing in on the characters first which it should of done. Then after you establish your characters bring me along for the ride which this film didn’t do they cared more about the scare element and not investing the audience into the central characters. 

Lastly, As the film suffers from being a boring film that offers nothing new or intriguing at all since the film like I mentioned is very familiar to other films the whole film is so predictable and is painstakingly boring and I kept checking when this thing was going to end as it just dragged on. If they reworked the whole script and put more care and backstory into the characters the film could of been alright instead its a terribly structured story with hollow characters and predictable scares you see a mile away. The Grudge (2020) is one of the most painfully boring, lazily written and predictable films I have ever seen The Grudge is truly horrible. 

This film centres on a family that is haunted by a demonic spirit and they try to figure out whats causing it to solve to and stop the sheer madness of what is going on 

Rated R : for disturbing violence and bloody images, terror and some language

Demian Bichir : Demian is giving a solid performance with a terribly muddled script! Bichir gives a in all honest solid performance as he is the only interesting character of the film and you can see him acting his heart out to try elevate the story with his performance. He plays a very stereotypical character but brings as much commitment as he could to it and he works with what he has to bring this character to life. He plays this very emotionally shut out person that tries to not get attached to someone again as he has had tragedy in his past and even though it is never discussed he brings the emotional pain through such greatly presented emotive emotion. Bichir brings such a fantastic range of emotion to such a poorly written character. He can say so much by saying so little he engages you into him the moment you see him and it is all due to how great Demian is bringing such a sadness to him I haven’t seen explored from him before as for someone who seems like he has everything put together on the outside on the inside he’s a broken human and he brings that quality brilliantly in such a subtle way. He never has big explosive moments of rage sure he will raise his voice and get upset but he for the most part keeps his emotions inside and gives a very restrained emotional performance that in all honesty is the only performance that was entertaining to watch. 

Nicolas Peace : Nicolas gave a horribly directed film that is worse then I thought! Nicolas Peace is known for drama horrors who’s other work I have not seen but after seeing with what he brought to this film I wasn’t that impressed. He is firstly remaking a horror film series that has already been done 4 times and he does not bring anything original or different. Instead he retreads familiar water and brings all the tropes we hate from horror films and uses them here for an hour and 30 minutes. Nicolas makes so many side plots that either aren’t completed or makes no sense as I myself was finding myself confused constantly of what the main plot line. He does this horrible move by thinking we care about hollow characters and Boggs the films with all these side plots that detract from the main story and makes thing confusing for no reason expect for the fact for us to care about more characters in an already crowded film of characters. If he took the time and gave us time to get to know the characters and their backstories I wouldn’t mind but it was so horribly presented with its characters that when new ones are introduced you simply don’t care as why should you care if they don’t care enough to flesh their characters out for the audience. It definitely is one of the laziest and horribly written horror films I have ever seen and I mean that as it was so unoriginal and boring. They use these cheap jump scares and gruesome violence just to be edgy because they know their grasping at straws to make this entertaining when the plot and script sucks. If the script has more care and investment into the characters and then the story fine the film would of been at the most ok but it didn’t do that it relied on cheap jump scares and terrible  fleshed out characters to carry this boring plot line we have seen five hundred different times. Nicolas you seem like you could do a lot better and if the script was better it would of been great but this film was awful and the direction wasn’t great either.