The Grudge (2004)

When you think Halloween, you may think ghouls, ghosts, costumes and some really good Simpsons' episodes. But for most observant Jews Halloween means spending the night watching some really cheesy USA-up-all-night-esque horror movies on cable, answering the house for cute preschool trick or treaters, or turning your house lights totally off to fend off the local hoodlums from hoarding all your Goldenberg peanut chews and only egging your house a couple times.

In general, Jews tend not to like Halloween or horror movies for that matter; Jews do not seek to be frightened. They have Jewish History for that.

But in recent years Hollywood has produced fine fright flicks that have terrified our country – even neurotic Jews. These flicks have had us jumping out of our katchkes, waking up from our shabbos naps with nightmares and breaking shomer negiah for a few seconds with our more exciting shidduch dates in dark theatres.

The Ring (2002) was one of those movies that scared the crap out of most people.

Sure the flick had just as many holes as my succah schach (Uhh who made the video tape?) but it had enough scare to entice most of the country's diehard fright seekers to the local theatres, even the superstitious red string wearing Jews.

The movie makers picked up on the tremendous success of THE RING, (the sequel/prequel are in production) and banged out the movie THE GRUDGE. Although they made one heck of attempt to rip off the best aspects of The RING, and even added hot vampire-slayer Sarah Michelle Gellar as well as the lovable Bill Pullman to the cast, the Grudge leaves much fright to be desired.

The movie, a remake of the popular horror Japanese movie JU-ON, (pun intended) is a thriller about a haunted house, and the terror that lies within. Any one, who enters this house, dies. Why? You'll have to see the flick. But it is the classic Halloween story and director Sam Raimi (Spiderman) does a marvelous job of laying out the storyline in a clever non-chronological cascade of scenes.

The movie blatantly snags the obvious from THE RING: the ghoulish blacked-haired killer woman, a young freaky kid, a hot blonde American girl , her hot rugged looking boyfriend, some great freaky effects and not to ruin the film, but even the endings are similar; every character who dies in THE RING dies in THE GRUDGE. Bravo, Hollywood definitely knows their audience all too well.

There are some decent fright scenes that'll get you jumping out of your seat (hopefully on top of your date) and the plot has some freaky surprises, but unfortunately there are some scenes that'll even make you giggle at their level of corniness.

The most disappointing part of the movie is Sarah Michelle Gellar's non vampire slayer role. You are dying for her to just bust out some Buffy killer moves and at some points you think she'll just start kicking some ghost tail, but unfortunately the only role Gellar's character invokes is petrified Shaggy from her Scooby Doo 2.