Much of the derision of this new Grudge reboot is blamed on the mostly needless contrivance of multiple timelines, but what's really fatal is the aesthetic miscalculation of redesigning the ghosts to be generic ghouls. Gone are the pale ghosts with bulging eyes and disturbing contortions. Director Nicolas Pesce has said he thought the ghosts should instead reflect American ghosts but slapping the guttural noises of the original ghosts onto the new dead eyed ghouls just doesn't work. There's some terrific practical gore effects but like the murderer's row of character actors (William Sadler! Jacki Weaver! Demian Bechir! Andrea Risenborough!) they are mostly squandered. One wishes that the filmmakers had leaned into the way Lin Shaye's demented character mixes sick laughter with the iconic throat clicking noise and made her into the central ghoul.

It's a shame this film is so devoid of any scares. The grim atmosphere and moody lighting works well and the heavy dosage of grief the characters are navigating suggests the filmmaker wanted to have the ghosts function as visual allegories of trauma, but one is left with a lot of cheap loud jump scares and precious little substance.

"devoid of any scares" is the right way to describe this. The bigger problem is the use of "The Grudge" in title it really does not make any sense for this movie or has any reference of the past movie(s).

I checked the time so often during this movie only to discover around five minutes had passed. This is deathly dull. Not scary and unintentionally funny at times. I will be shocked if there's a worse horror movie this year. Hell, there might not be a worse movie. I hated the first two Grudge movies in the American series and didn't think this could get worse. I was wrong.

F