Scary movies are hard for me because I rarely find them scary (real life is scary enough). So for me, the audience reaction to a horror movie is critical. I rely on their reactions to let me know if a movie is really scary. Having said that, judging by my audience, unless you are a 16 year old at the movies with a ton of friends, you won't find The Grudge that scary. There are a few jump in your seat moments but no real suspense and nothing truly scary.

Like Shall We Dance? and The Ring (with which it has a few things in common), The Grudge is a remake of a Japanese film (Ju-On, released last year). In our version, we have Karen and Doug (Sarah Michelle Geller and Jason Behr), American exchange students in Tokyo. Sarah is a social work student interning at an outpatient care facility. When fellow intern Yoko doesn't show up for work, Karen is assigned to look in on one of her clients. Emma (Grace Zabriskie) is a catatonic American woman in Tokyo with her son and his wife (William Mapother and Clea Duvall). Long story short, something horrific happened in the house and now everyone who comes in contact with it will die. Sound familiar?

To make things interesting, The Grudge shoots back in forth in time, giving us the history of the house and those who have encountered it (like Bill Pullman). With Buffy the Vampire Slayer in the lead role, I kept waiting for her to start kicking some serious ghost behind. Alas, since we weren't working with vampires, I guess that wasn't possible.

The ghosts themselves weren't very scary. However, there was one scene where the ghost materializes out of a black smoke substance that was kind of funky. The Grudge has an over-abundance of "Don't go up the stairs!" and "Stay out of the attic!" moments. And I don't know about you but after several people die mysteriously in a house, I'll be damned if I go there alone, at night, and proceed to walk through the house when the lights aren't working! Did the mainly American victims think that horror movie logic didn't apply in Japan?

Unfortunately, The Grudge is more about cheap thrills instead of real chills.