OxfordPress.com

Grade: B-

Verdict: Buffy's got her hands full in a house of "Amityville Horror"-style scares and death.

By BOB LONGINO
Cox News Service

If you don't have a decent enough idea for a Halloween-style horror trick, just do what they do in Hollywood -- steal from the Japanese.

Like Japan's creepy "Ringu," which became "The Ring" with Naomi Watts and generated $129 million, the sometimes creepy "Ju-On" has morphed into the Americanized "The Grudge." Directed by Takashi Shimizu, who wrote and directed the original, the new film is so red, white and blue that even though it's set in Tokyo, the star is Sarah Michelle Gellar (aka TV's Buffy). Most of the cast seems to be from the States, too. Which sort of makes you wonder why so many young Americans are living in ultra-expensive Japan. Must have been a run on Tokyo after that little indie charmer "Lost in Translation."

Anyway, nurse Karen (Gellar) is one of many characters -- American and Japanese -- who, for various reasons, wind up inside a rather nondescript Tokyo house.

It's not just any old house, but the exact same house used in "Ju-On." The house is cursed with noisy bumps and creaks, a screeching black cat, a little boy (stuck in a closet sealed with tape, no less) and a stringy-haired female entity who doesn't take kindly to those who've chanced upon her domain.

Cross the threshold and whatever horrors happened in the house before become sort of focused on you.

Plotwise, "The Grudge" is an awful lot like "Ju-On," though Gellar's movie goes to greater lengths to ground all its boo-scares, haunts and murders in some sort of sensible story.

Still, there are plot holes. Unlike in "Ju-On," a couple of people who venture into the house don't wind up as sashimi (at least we don't see them get theirs), which sort of blows the film's whole conceit. Completely missing is the first film's emphasis on teen girls in school uniforms (who better to be distressed in a haunted house?).

Despite the small differences, "The Grudge" is a little creepier than the original. The American version's creepy-crawling phantom is used a little more sparingly and is more opaque, leaving the moviegoer's imagination to fill in some of the physical horrors.

Ultimately, it's a decent enough idea for a Halloween horror trick.