Sarah Michelle Gellar

UNBEARABLE ’GRUDGE’

"The Grudge 2" revolves around an undead mother-daughter duo who terrorize hapless souls across the globe. The star of the first installment, Sarah Michelle Gellar, is quickly dispatched at the outset, leaving new arrival Amber Tamblyn, playing her younger sister, to take over as scream queen.

As is often the case with such genre films, the movie was not screened for critics in advance of its Friday opening. In reviews published over the weekend, Daily Variety said the story made little sense, while the Hollywood Reporter said the film was "too pointless to bear."

The "Grudge" franchise originated in Japan, and both Hollywood versions were directed by its creator, Takashi Shimizu. The remakes were produced by Ghost House Pictures, a low-budget specialist run by "Spider-Man" director Sam Raimi and "Xena: Warrior Princess" creator Rob Tapert.

The film inevitably stole business from "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre: The Beginning," which fell three places to No. 5 with $7.8 million in its second weekend. Both are expected to take a hit in two weeks when yet another grisly sequel, "Saw 3," gets an early start on Halloween. "Chainsaw" distributor New Line Cinema is a unit of Time Warner.

In the arthouse world, novelist Truman Capote sashayed into movie theaters for the second time in just over a year, but this time with less style. "Infamous," a movie that covers the same ground as 2005’s "Capote" — the killings that inspired his true-life novel "In Cold Blood" — earned just $435,000 from 179 theaters in about 40 cities. By contrast, "Capote" opened with about $100,000 less from just 12 theaters, and went on to score an Academy Award for star Philip Seymour Hoffman.

In the new film, released by Time Warner’s Warner Independent Pictures, British actor Toby Jones generated good reviews for his turn as the fey scribe, even as pundits commiserated about the film’s unfortunate second-place arrival.