Tag Archives: Jeff Buhler

Trying Not to Hold One

The Grudge

by Hope Madden

Any time a film is remade, you have to ask why. Not to be cynical, but because it’s a legitimate query. Is there a compelling reason to watch this new one?

Nicolas Pesce hopes there’s reason to watch his retooling of The Grudge.

The Grudge began in 2000 with Takashi Shimizu’s Japanese horror Ju-on, which spawned three Japanese sequels and now four English language reworkings, two of which Shimizu directed himself. His 2004 version starring Sarah Michelle Geller became a tentpole of our J-horror obsession of the early 2000s.

Pesce, working with co-writer Jeff Buhler (The Midnight Meat Train—that was your first problem), pulls story ideas from across the full spate of Ju-on properties and braids them into a time-hopping horror.

Is there room for hope? There is, because Pesce landed on horror fanatics’ radars in 2016 with his incandescent feature debut, The Eyes of My Mother.  He followed this inspired piece of American gothic in 2018 with a stranger, less satisfying but utterly compelling bit of weirdness, Piercing.

And then there’s this cast: Andrea Riseborough, John Cho, Lin Shaye, Betty Gilpin, Jacki Weaver, Frankie Faison, Damian Bichir—all solid talents. You just wouldn’t necessarily know it from this movie.

Pesce’s basically created an anthology package—four stories held together by a family of especially unpleasant ghosts. But that one sentence contains two of the film’s biggest problems.

Let’s start with the ghosts. Shimizu’s haunters—Takako Fuji and Yuya Ozeki—were sweet-faced, fragile and innocent seeming. The perversion of that delicacy is one of the many reasons Shimizu’s films left such a memorable mark. Pesce’s substitute family loses that deceptive, macabre innocence.

The way the film jumps from story to story and back again undermines any tension being built, and each story is so brief and so dependent on short-hand character development (cigarettes, rosaries, ultrasounds) that you don’t care what happens to anyone.

Jacki Weaver, who seems to be in a comedy, is wildly miscast. Go-to horror regular Shaye has the only memorable scenes in the film. Riseborough, who is a chameleonic talent capable of better things, delivers a listless performance that can’t possibly shoulder so much of the film’s weight.

Jump scares are telegraphed, CGI and practical effects are unimpressive, editing is uninspired and, worst of all, the sound design lacks any of that goosebump-inducing inspiration Shimizu used to such great effect.

So, no. There was no reason to remake The Grudge.

Sometimes, Reboots Are Better

Pet Sematary

by Hope Madden

There is a lot of love out there for Mary Lambert’s 1989 hit Pet Sematary.

Why, again? Was it the wooden lead performances? The adorably sinister villain? Massive Headwound Harry? Come on—there was a lot wrong with that movie and only two things were really right: The Ramones and Zelda.

Zelda was creepy AF.

Fear not! Directors Kevin Kölsch and Dennis Widmyer (Starry Eyes) were obviously also affected by Zelda because she (Alyssa Levine) delivers again. On all other items, the directing duo improve.

Except The Ramones, but they are here in spirit.

Jason Clarke leads things as Louis, big city doc transplanted to quiet, rural Maine. Apparently he and his family—Rachel (Amy Seimetz), Ellie (Jeté Laurence), Gage (Hugo and Lucas Lavoie) and Church the Cat—didn’t ask a lot of questions about that 80-acre lot they bought. Lotta nasty stuff out back.

John Lithgow takes over for the tough to replace Fred Gwynne and his over-the-top Mainer accent. Lithgow’s more subdued Grumpy Old Man neighbor falls victim again to the pull of that “sour ground” out back when his beloved little Ellie’s cat gets hit by one of those semis speeding down the nearby road.

The film really tests your ability to suspend disbelief, but it also layers a lot of history and creepiness in tidy fashion. The superior performances alone make the reboot a stronger film, although familiarity means it has to try a little harder to actually scare you.

One help is a change screenwriters Matt Greenberg and Jeff Buhler make to the story. It’s a big alteration and not everyone will be thrilled, but it limits the laughability once things turn ugly. The film also lessons spiritual guide Pascow’s (Obssa Ahmed) screen time and gives his presence a spookier, less comedic feel. There’s a new ending, too—meaner and more of a gut punch. Nice.

The movie looks good, and Clarke (playing a grieving father for the second time this weekend, after his WWII drama The Aftermath) anchors the events with a thoughtful, believable performance that helps Pet Sematary overcome some of its more nonsensical moments.

It is not a classic, but it delivers the goods.

I still missed The Ramones.





Spare the Rod

The Prodigy

by Hope Madden

There is nothing especially wrong with The Prodigy, director Nicholas McCarthy’s take on the Bad Seed formula. Not much right about it, either.

Sarah (Taylor Schilling, Orange is the New Black) is starting to think there’s something wrong with her son, Miles (Jackson Robert Scott). He’s just too smart, and he doesn’t ever want to play with other kids. Plus there was that wrench bashing incident.

Luckily he speaks Hungarian in his sleep and his psychologist has a friend whose research is a little out of the ordinary…

How do we find an original take on the murderous offspring? Straight up psycho’s been done. Same with satanic possession, zombies, rabies, pet semataries…

Writer Jeff Buhler (the upcoming Pet Sematary) dreams up an adequate vehicle that allows us to watch the battle between innocence and evil rage inside Scott’s lovely, wide eyes.

Wisely, the film is a bit less concerned with who’s winning that battle than it is with the lengths a parent will go in order to save her child. It’s the slightly less traveled road, and one that Schilling journeys fairly convincingly.

Scott likewise convinces in a tough role for a child, oscillating between frightened boy and cold blooded psychopath deftly enough to leave trace of one in the other at times to keep you guessing who’s who.

It’s just so hard not to feel like you’ve seen this movie before. The dad says stick with medical science, but the mom is willing to chase these crazy spiritual theories that conveniently leapt into her lap. And, of course, there has to be a mysterious path toward fixing the problem that she stumbles upon, because cosmic evil is tidy like that.

The bigger problem is the leaden pacing and lack of action. McCarthy may be going for an atmospheric dread, but the result feels stagnant and drowsy.

Which is too bad because the movie has some redeeming qualities—a late-film performance from Brittany Allen (It Stains the Sands Red), for one. Cookie-cutter plotting and flat direction keeps it from taking advantage of solid performances, though, and leaving you wishing for something more.