The Grudge 2

What’s a bad sequel but a revenant soul doomed to repeat itself? The Grudge 2 broadens the reach of the Japanese curse that put Sarah Michelle Gellar’s doe-eyed gaijin in the hospital, but the scares are the same: the hair, the tub, the yowling cat-boy, etc. Once again, we’re treated to loosely aligned scenes of half-formed characters (including Amber Tamblyn as Gellar’s brittle sister, so slight the movie nearly forgets she’s there) getting a faceful of director Takashi Shimizu’s croaking, implacable, and, yes, still scary housewife-geist.