Easy, Pleasy, Japa... oh sorry you're dead.

The new Grudge movie is pretty scary. Lots of creepy gurgling noises and unexplained hair and tiny blue naked Japanese boys who stare at you from out of close spaces for no discernable reason. I know that doesn't actually SOUND scary, but believe me, it is.

Much like its antecedent and the other famous Japanese-import mystery-horror flick, The Ring (and in fact Dark Water, which was not-very-eerily similar to the second Ring), it's tinged faintly blue and populated by inscrutable allusions to Japanese folklore. It is important to remember in these films that mother figures, water, and long hair are all in some way evil.

Anyway, I found the new one passably entertaining, and scary enough in an I'm-still-sort-of-jumpy-because-I'm-alone kind of a way. It continues its prequel's tradition of in violating the "safe" areas of conventional horror movies, this time [HUGE SPOILERS] by turning the Disbelieving Authority Figure into an aspect of the monster and by having the Obscure Expert Who Is Our Only Hope simply declare "No, you can't stop it. You're just doomed. We're all doomed," and then die. [/HUGE SPOILERS] Not quite as scary as the first one, I suppose because it's missing the whole "Wow, even Buffy the Vampire Slayer is afraid of this creepy evil Japanese chick" thing.

I'm noticing also that horror movies have stopped ending on the "well, that's one evil force from beyond the grave that won't menace us any longer" speech followed by the "ooh, it's really going to come back someday, eek" final-scare shot. The new technique is to just kill off the last remaining character in an emotionally unsatisfying manner and then go to black and roll the credits, implying of course that the monster / killer / whatever is just entirely unstoppable and you might as well not even bother.

On Another Note:

If you believe that, should you fail, while thinking, to produce a correct interpretation of the facts, that sometimes the person to whom you express your fallacious interpretation will grant you another "thing," you are gravely mistaken. In fact, you have another think coming, as your first think was sub-par.

I don't care what Google says. I don't care what your aunt Millie says. I don't even care what Lynne Truss says. I don't care what anyone says. And I don't believe - in this case - that if "lots of people say it, it becomes right." "Thing" doesn't make ANY SENSE in context. The expression means that the speaker is giving the hearer another chance to consider their opinion. If somebody says you have another thing coming, well, then, they have another think coming. That's all there is to it.