Got Grudge?

Milk may do a body good, but the maker’s of “The Grudge 2” want you to know that over consumption of the bovine fluid may also lead to death.
“The Grudge 2,” which appropriately opened Friday the 13th, is a sequel to 2004’s “The Grudge,” which is a remake of the 2003 Japanese film, “Ju-on.” If that sounds confusing, then the film’s plot is nothing short of a Gordian knot, woven with one-dimensional characters, crater-size plot holes and laughable death sequences.
The film attempts to weave three storylines, two in Japan and one in Chicago. The characters are connected only by the ghosts that haunt them, but the film’s director, Takashi Shimizu (who also directed “The Grudge” and “Ju-on”), annoyingly cross-cuts the stories with fade-outs every five to fifteen minutes.
The resulting film is more parody than sequel. Shimizu rips entire scenes from his previous films and tries to pass them off as revelatory. He doesn’t stop there; he also shamelessly steals entire scenes from unconnected places. The opening sequence is an almost verbatim reproduction of a scene from “Six Feet Under.”
Shimizu uses the appropriate horror movie formula – mix two parts scantily-clad women (here cheerleaders and catholic school girls), one part ghosts (mother-ghost having bad hair day joined by mewing son), and a dash of creepy noises (here, throat-clicking) – but he completely neglects the art of suspense; the product is laughable at best.
Death by milk may be original, but that doesn’t make it an effective scare technique. The comic death scenes, poor acting and absent plot joined by peek-a-boo with an elderly man on a bus and an old lady who talks like Swan from “Mad TV” and looks like the shop owner from “Gremlins,” and you get not a horror movie, but a hysterical comedy.