The Grudge: Film Analysis

the one who murdered her, but instead seeks vengeance on people who enter the house and people who come into contact with someone who has entered the house. This vengeful spirit seems to act more like a deadly disease rather than how it is traditionally suppose to act. Another goes that goes against traditional Japanese folktales is Takeo’s ghost which appears near the end of the movie. In many Japanese folktales, the ghosts of a male are usually seen as nonthreatening and often are seen as guides. Many of the male ghosts are often from men who have fallen in battle and then later roam the earth grieving over their death. They have also been know to help out others who are on a journey and act as more of a warning than as a angered spirit.

At the last scene when Takeo’s spirit appears in front of Rika, he does not seem at all friendly or harmless. Instead, he reaches towards her with his bloody had and then the movie cuts to black and then opens back up with Rika’s corpse laying there with blood on her face. This scene again shows that Takeo’s spirit goes against the traditional folktales. Since the film goes against many of the traditional Japanese folktales that many are use to, this leaves a lot of confusion as to why the ghosts in the movie are killing all these people. Because many of the people are confused and unsure of what this evil spirits intentions are, this leaves many of them in a state of fear because many people are afraid of the unknown (Sumpter pg 7).

While the film Ju-On goes against and defiles certain cultural and traditional aspects of Japan in order to create fear, the film The Grudge takes a different approach in the production of fear. The Grudge seems to try and blend in with many of the popular Western horror movies made between the 1970s and 1990s and add similar elements and themes from them. Many of the more popular horror films that were made at that time in America had a sort of similar theme that involved a seemingly perfect family at first and that everything goes wrong when they find out the deep dark truth behind either the place they are currently living in or one of the family members that is currently living with them. It was not so much that something that may have been wrong with the house or father that scared the people of this time, but instead it was how it affected the families who were living in the house or with the father. Many people who live in American are always told about

how there is this great American Dream, which is great life that includes many benefits in which everyone is entitled too. One main idea that many people always think of when thinking about the American Dream is that if anyone works hard enough that they will be rewarded with an abundance of money, good social status, and a loving and caring family. One of the ideas that many people often included in the American Dream between the 1970s and 1990s was this idea of having a nuclear family. A nuclear family was this idea of having a perfect family which often included having two parents who were of opposite sex, having one or more children who owned by the parent, and a nice house in a neighborhood filled with other nuclear families like them. Nuclear families were also seen as the perfect families because everyone in the family was always expected to get along with each other and both the husband and wife were loyal to each other with one or both of them having a financially stable job. Many people at the time thought that not having one of these types of families was un-American and anything un-American was not looked well upon since there was a Cold War going on. In order to be a nuclear family, they often had to look perfect to the public, which is often why when crimes like domestic violence happened, many people often looked the other way because they did not want to believe that these un-American families were so close and living on their home turf (Whitfield pg 374). This is one reason why The Grudge was so hard to watch for many Americans is because Kayako’s lust and betrayal of her husband and Takeo’s violence towards his family was seen as the end to their nuclear family. The end to their nuclear family shook the foundation of many other American families who were also struggling as well.
Another idea the film The Grudge does differently towards the American audience is it makes them feel alienated while watching this film. Instead of casting Japanese people for this film, Takashi Shimizu added people who originally came from the West and moved in and settled down in Japan. Putting in American actors allows the audience relate more to them and how they are feeling instead being unable to relate to Japanese actors. During the film many of the Americans living in Japan show a clear discomfort and culture shock towards much of the environment and culture around them. One of the characters, Jennifer Williams, shows a clear dislike for the country she is living in because she cannot seem to understand what anyone is saying and is shown to get lost quite easily. Characters like her make the audience also feel isolated, since Japans culture is so much more different than their own. Later on through out the film, each American character is killed off by this foreign spiritual entity that they knew nothing about. Because many of these American characters were killed off by some foreign entity that they did not understands, this gives off a feeling to the audience that they should stay away from other places that are foreign to them or do not understand (Zapf pg 108).
During the 1980s and 1990s, there was a huge increase in the Women’s Rights Movement that was taking place.

Women of America were begging to become even more independent that they were before. Much like Japan, many of these women began to go off do more activities that wouldn’t have been done in the passed. The wage gap began to decrease between men and women, many women were beginning to get their college degrees, women were beginning to get higher paying jobs that generally consisted of men, and many families began to have two people working jobs instead of just the father working one. Again just like Japan, all of this was beginning to worry many men, because now their own masculinity was being challenged. Before all this, many men were use to being the breadwinners of the house while the wife stayed home and took care of the children and the house. Now many of the men were not only afraid of women taking their jobs and making more money than them, but were also afraid that their feeling of more power would cause the women to leave them to peruse their own life (Taylor pg 771). In The Grudge, it uses this fear of the falling masculinity to is advantage in a couple ways. The first way it does this is when it shows the reason to way Takeo murdered his family. Takeo caught Kayako in the act of stalking her teacher Peter Kirk, whom she was showing interest in. Because this scene Kayako’s inability to be loyal to her husband, this spreads fear through the people watching this

movie, making them worried about losing their own masculinity, but at the same time making worry about losing their own sanity if they did lose their masculinity. Another difference that happens through out this movie that does not happen in the other throughout the movie and in the ending scene it only portrays Kayko’s spirit as the only one that kills people, but does not show Takeo’s spirit at all. Because Kayko’s is shown to be unfaithful towards her husband and be the only murderous spirit, this gives of the sense that Kayko is the true evil of this film. Since Kayko is portrayed as evil and committing evil acts, this could leave a sense of terror towards women in the already fearful masculine American society.
When looking at both Ju-On: The Grudge and The Grudge, no one can say that both these films are exactly the same. Through close examination of each culture, director Takashi Shimizu was able to successfully create the same movie twice, but make each of them just as different as the other through the use of cultural, traditional, and social elements in which each country was accustomed too.