Death isn’t dark enough for the haunted characters that populate the unwieldy “Grudge” franchise.
Instead, it’s what happens after that’s worse, when the vengeful (and always very moist) spirits appear and attempt to exact cosmic-level revenge on whoever happens to be around.
The fourth American film based on Takashi Shimizu’s wildly popular J-horror films functions as both a reboot of the series and a strange sequel to the first Americanized remake of the franchise.
The new entry has all the hallmarks of the first round of remakes, butLike its predecessors, director Nicolas Pesce’s “The Grudge” utilizes cheap tricks both on a narrative scale as well as with tired genre conventions.
Yet Pesce’s skill with gore — used so masterfully in his black-and-white breakout “The Eyes of My Mother” — and a stacked cast that includes the likes of Andrea Riseborough, John Cho, Betty Gilpin, Demián Bichir,
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