This review is of the TV-14 edited version. Note that a review of the unedited version would be more negative

It’s time to return to The Grudge series. Definitely not one of my favorite horror series to say the least. Part of the problem with this series has always been how overpowered the villain is. Basically you’ve got someone with the powers of a Shonen Jump villain going up against below average mortals who couldn’t throw a punch to save their life and have no mental defenses. At the end of the day that means there is absolutely no hope for anybody here so the whole film is really just there for show.

The movie starts off with a kid trying to explain that he needs someone to break him out of the psychiatric ward because The Grudge has already infiltrated. The staff laugh this off and explain that the place is completely secure so nothing can happen to him. The poor kid’s mangled beyond recognition in the next scene and the doctor tries to find answers but good luck with that. Meanwhile we cut to Lisa who is temporarily staying with her brother Max and his daughter Rose in the house where all of this had gone down. It’s a rather eery place to live but Max figures he can fix the place up really well and eventually turn things around. He’s in the red right now so he will definitely need things to really work out well for him. Unfortunately The Grudge isn’t satisfied yet and starts murdering more people. It’s possible that the only one who can stop her is Naoko, the sister to the original host.

Technically “The Grudge” is more of a supervillain name and it’s for both the girl and the cat who are running around. You could make the case that these are just the physical manifestations of the Grudge since it’s more of a non physical form anyway so I’ll keep saying Grudge for convenience sake. One thing the series does really well is to show just how spooky they are though. Grudge’s movements are very erratic which makes it hard for you to predict her next move. She can be deceptively fast and also has an incredible grip. Basically if she grabs you then it’s all over.

I would say the frustrating part is that absolutely nobody tries to attack her at all. They all just fall down and start crying, hide under the bed, or give their back to the creature. Look, you’re going to die anyway but wouldn’t you at least want to go down with a fight? The film doesn’t even try to make it look like these people are ready to fight back and I think that’s a mistake because it makes no sense. They’re literally on the the edge of defeat getting close to death. If that’s not enough to make you fight back then I don’t know what would be.

Characters consistently make the wrong decisions. Near the end of the film Lisa is trying to escape and just watched someone get butchered in front of her. The next move is to run for it right? Instead she just falls to the ground and extreme plot armor saves her from being the next victim. Everyone should have a fight or flee instinct but for some reason that turned into a just fall down and whimper effect. I just don’t think that would be the case for most people. I would argue almost none of them would have that effect at least even if it’s a few.

Okay so on to the negatives. Wait…were those actually the positives? Yeah we ran out of those a while back. The only real positive here is that the Grudge has an awesome design and I really like the sound effects. They are really scary and this is a film that will always be scary to watch. I would go as far as to say the Grudge may have the scariest design for a horror villain but I would have to think about it. The close runner ups who could also take the title would probably be the main villain of Insidious who has the red mask and the classic Xenomorph.

As always this is a very bloody film with a lot of over the top violence and dark themes. We can never seem to escape the cat dying which is a very unfortunate part of the mythos. It really doesn’t add any benefit to the film so I’d rather skip that. Having a little kid get murdered in the opening scene really sets the tone here but then you also have the Grudge possessing people to stab their friends and make the whole thing more personal. This is a very dark and dreary film from cover to cover that doesn’t exactly make you thrilled to watch it.

As I mentioned earlier, the Grudge has no weaknesses so it’s not like there was ever any hope here. Naoko’s big master plan is basically to transfer the curse onto the little kid by having her drink a bunch of blood. Gross factor aside, this plan makes absolutely no sense to anybody who managed to pay attention to the lore at the beginning. The Grudge came into existence in part because of how Naoko’s sister had to drink the blood and dark essence of every curse. Basically the curses all merged into a super dark influence which took control of her and made her commit all of these deeds.

So drinking that blood would just make a new host but wouldn’t stop the demon. In what world would it destroy the demon? Maybe you can say Naoko was planning to murder the kid after that but why would that have any effect on anything? Her sister died a while back and the curse is still here. So in short, I don’t see any purpose in including Naoko in this film. I don’t think the writers really thought this subplot through because it doesn’t work as a twist about the plan not working when it never had any chance of working in the first place. It doesn’t make any senseeeeee!!

At least the Grudge does give us a classic twist ending which is more inline with what you would expect for this kind of film. It works pretty well and the execution is on point. It doesn’t exactly make you feel any better about the film having any kind of central purpose other than showing people dying in all sorts of ways. At this point there doesn’t seem to be much of a point to these film. They’re just like Halloween or other slasher types where it’s really just about seeing a bunch of deaths. Still, at least in some of those you can pretend that the heroes have a shot and it feels like they do because the villains are a bit more mortal. When the villain’s all powerful with no weaknesses then it takes the bite out of the whole thing.

Overall, The Grudge 3 is a pretty terrible film all around. The heroes never stood a chance and you knew it so you’re really just watching everyone getting bumped off and hoping against hope that there is some kind of twist to save the movie. Inevitably it never comes and so there isn’t really a reason to check this one out except to have a grudge against the film itself. It’s not the kind of film that will be saving the horror genre or anything fancy like that.

Overall 1/10