The Grudge 2
2006; directed by Takashi Shimizu

Ten years ago, a small little AOL-based website was borne out of a love of great films like The Killer and Drunken Master II. Your intrepid webmaster would have never thought that hkfilm.net would eventually amass over 1600 pages, and cover the works of such diverse directors as Tsui Hark, Wong Jing, Johnnie To, Wong Kar-Wai, and Ringo Lam, amongst many others.

Taking that in mind, with a half-ass bit of pomp and circumstance, we present Hong Kong Film Net's 900th review, a US remake of a Japanese horror flick that wasn't so hot to begin with. And, lo and behold, it stars none other than the master thespian Edison Chen, a.k.a. the world's only rapper that can suck in simultaneously Cantonese and English, and the guy you never want to have a digital camera at a bachelor party unless you want to get death threats from Triads. God help us all.

Well, actually Eddie doesn't star in this... or does he? There's so many lame plot twists thown at the viewer here that it makes a Joseph Lai production seem downright comprehensible by comparison. At any rate, from what I can gather, there's a haunted house in Tokyo that stupid teenage girls go into and get infected by evil spirits, which causes them to be kidnapped or whatever via a sea of black hair from some slightly creepy half-naked kids. Yeah, I'm with you, what the hell?

Putting my hatred of Edison Chen's acting abilities aside, The Grudge 2 isn't a good horror movie. It isn't a good suspense movie. It isn't a good psychological thriller. Oh, sure, it tries to be all three of those things, but it succeeds in exactly none of them. When you have Edison Chen in your movie, and his awful acting is the least of your problems, you know you've got a big crap sandwich on your hands. And this guy definitely ain't gonna take a bite of that.

RATING: 3