Roger Ebert Was Wrong About This Sam Raimi-Produced Horror Movie

In the early 2000s Sam Raimi persuaded Takashi Shimizu to remake his own Ju-On for American audiences, producing the project through Ghost House Pictures. The resulting film, The Grudge, was made for about $10 million and went on to gross $187 million, yet critics disliked it and it holds a 41% score on Rotten Tomatoes compared with the original’s 80%.

Even Roger Ebert said he was "gob-smacked," questioning why Raimi and his team had taken on the project. Ebert gave the film one star out of four and faulted its reliance on the "age-old formula of horror movies, in which characters who hear alarming sounds go to investigate," as well as what he saw as a refusal to explore Japanese culture.

United States, Japan

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