How to Build a Better Monster

What makes women so gosh-darn creepy?

I very rarely go to the theater to see films (because honestly, how many worthwhile films are shown in mainstream theaters?), but I had to see The Grudge as soon as possible. I went to see it Friday afternoon, and although it satisfied my desire for a good scare, I was ultimately disappointed.

I realize that discussing The Grudge in relation to my study is a difficult task, because it is directed by Takashi Shimizu and would require me to account for cultural differences with which I am not too familiar. However, there are some questions I think I can raise without stepping too far into unfamiliar territory.

[Some spoilers…]

The plot unfolds through a non-linear arrangement of scenes, but the general plot is that Karen, an American student studying abroad in Japan, is sent to replace a student who has not shown up at the house where she is supposed to act as a caregiver. As Karen approaches the house, she senses something is wrong, and she makes several alarming discoveries when she enters the house.

Hours later, cops arrive at the house after the death of Karen’s patient, and no one can say exactly what has happened.

Through the course of the movie, we discover that the house is “haunted” by members of a family that lived there before. Apparently, the dead bodies of the wife and husband were found in the attic, and it was believed that the husband killed his wife and then himself. Their young boy was also found dead.

By the end of the movie, we learn that the husband killed his wife, Kayako, in an act of rage when he discovered a shrine dedicated to a professor with whom she’d fallen in love. The professor, unaware of her fascination, comes to the house after tracking down the sender of love letters. At the house, he discovers the shrine and zillions of photographs, and then finds Kayako’s bloodied corpse.

And due to the passion and fury of the circumstances, the house is “cursed” with the anger and sorrow of the ruined family. And one would expect the husband’s spirit to be the one continuing “the grudge,” right? He was, afterall, the character who murdered his loved ones and suffered such humiliation and disappointment.

However, it is Kayako who seems the biggest threat to anyone who enters the household. Her spirit hovers in the corners of rooms, looming over terrified spectators, upon whom she will later inflict pain. Even when people escape the house, she follows them. She tracks down the sister of the new house residents in her office building, and later follows the woman to her apartment. The spirit then sucks the terrified woman away from the safety of her own bed. And when gutsy mystery-hunters like Karen, her boyfriend, and the detective working the case enter the house, they are hunted down not by the ghost of the husband, but by the vengeful wife.

I was disappointed in The Grudge primarily because the plot just didn’t seem to add up; why was Kayako the spirit who was wreaking havoc? Shouldn’t it have been the husband? Granted, she was a terrifying figure, but the only reason I can offer for her horror is the fact that she was an obsessive person. She committed her energies to stalking a person she did not even know, and it led to her death. Her life was consumed with the hunt for a person she desired, and it could be possible that this obsessive behavior translated into the afterlife. Instead of love, she sought other things like pain and murder.

I don’t even buy this, though. The husband remains such a small figure; we only see him in photographs (on maybe just three occasions?) and in a short flashback relaying the discovery of his wife’s shrine and her murder. To me, it feels like there was a deliberate attempt to portray Kayako as the terrifying creature, and the reasons behind that decision are never made apparent to me.

The words of so many male horror directors keep popping up in my mind. Argento said he’d prefer to watch the murder of a pretty woman to that of an ugly man. De Palma claimed that the reason why female victims work better than male victims is because “you fear more for her than you would for a husky man.” And then Hitchcock: “Torture the women!” Obviously, women lend themselves to being ideal victims, but do they also make for the best monsters? Carol Clover argues that the Final Girl in slasher films is often masculinized, and that the serial killers are feminized men. I realize that The Grudge is not a slasher film, but I find myself wondering if there is actually something masculine in Kayako’s character, which allows her to be so terrifying in the film. The husband’s spirit is weak in comparison with her, and he is the one we would really expect to be vengeful. What is suggested by the fact that the woman is the source of terror and agony when she seemingly has no grudge to hold?

Posted by Kate Cielinski at October 24, 2004 10:23 AM