Being Creeped for Once.

I watched The Grudge tonight – the American version. (Although it did have a Japanese director so maybe it counts as an American-Japanese version.)

I’m pleased to say that it was the first thing I’ve found creepy for a very long time – sufficiently creepy, in fact, as to make me feel slightly uneasy about going upstairs. There’s a lot of going upstairs in The Grudge. I’d go so far as to say that if The Grudge has a leitmotif, it’s going upstairs. And it was only after I’d watched it that I realised how much the Japanese version of creepiness relies heavily on the presence of stairs. Maybe it’s because the Japanese are generally shorter in stature than Europeans and stairs are more intimidating to them. I’m guessing.

The other thing I realised was that Japanese eyes are better than European eyes at looking scared, thus transmitting fear to the viewer more effectively. This does not, of course, apply to the supernatural women who are often the prime motivators of the fear. With them it’s more usual to see only one eye hanging creepily in a gap between the long black hair hanging over the face, especially when they’re crawling down some stairs. Japanese lady ghosts do an awful lot of crawling, which, for some unaccountable reason, is creepier than floating through the air as European lady wraiths are more wont to do. It also adds an extra element of mystery because one is left wondering why they never get their voluminous white nightgowns dirty.

So there you have it. The Grudge comes recommended by me. Only if I might be permitted a spoiler, don’t expect Sarah Michelle Gellar to be the only one to escape the wrath of the disgruntled ones. There’s a woman in a white nightgown with long black hair standing right behind her.