Sarah Michelle Gellar

THE GRUDGE 2 (15, 102mins) *** Horror/Thriller. Amber Tamblyn, Edison Chen, Arielle Kebbel, Teresa Palmer, Misako Uno, Jennifer Beals, Christopher Cousins, Matthew Knight, Sarah Roemer, Joanna Cassidy, Takako Fuji, Ohga Tanaka, Sarah Michelle Gellar. Director: Takashi Shimizu.

TAKASHI Shimizu’s follow-up to the American remake of his own celebrated horror opus bears little resemblance to the Japanese sequel Ju-On 2: The Grudge.

The story line is completely different, employing a confusing multi-layered narrative to delve deeper into the back-story of vengeful long-haired spirit Kayako (Fuji) and her son Toshio (Tanaka), whose violent deaths in a Tokyo house give birth to the malevolent curse.

Sarah Michelle Gellar reprises her role as care worker Karen Davis, who endured the full force of The Grudge in the first film and tried to escape the spirits by setting light to the house.

In the aftermath of the blaze, Karen is confined to hospital, haunted by her hellish experience. The local police are preparing to charge her with the murder of her boyfriend, who was trapped inside the house.

Back in America, Karen’s bed-ridden mother (Cassidy) learns of Karen’s predicament and she entreats her other daughter, Aubrey (Tamblyn), to travel to Japan to escort Karen back home.

At the hospital, Aubrey meets photographer Eason (Chen), and together they become embroiled in Karen’s battle with Kayako and Toshio.

Meanwhile, in one of the city’s schools, misfit Allison (Kebbel) tries to win the respect of popular girls Vanessa (Palmer) and Miyuki (Uno) by accompanying them into the burned-out haunted house, where a dare goes horribly wrong when Kayako appears to Allison.

In a third storyline, set in a Chicago apartment building, Trish (Beals) moves in with her fiance Bill (Cousins), whose young son Jake (Knight) resents the new woman in his father’s life. His animosity seems to infect the rest of the building, and Jake notices residents acting strangely, as if they are in the thrall of a terrifying unseen force.

Aside from a couple of cheap shocks like Kayako suddenly emerging from a black and white photograph, The Grudge 2 rarely thrills or unsettles.

Kayako, with her raspy guttural breathing and jerky physical movements, appears so frequently that she quickly loses her power to spook us, accompanied by Christopher Young’s orchestral score, which opts for discordant strings at maximum volume to signal impending doom.

Performances are perfunctory - Tamblyn and Kebbel look like rabbits caught in the headlights and most of the characters are undernourished. Screenwriter Stephen Susco creates nothing but confusion with his criss-crossing plot that ricochets between the three threads, gradually knitting them together.

It’s deliberately disorienting, and unfortunately we don’t care strongly enough about the players to unravel the knots (don’t be fooled into assuming that the storylines unfold simultaneously).

With an impressive $22m opening weekend in America, The Grudge 2 will doubtless spawn a third film in the series, but Shimizu should probably lay Kayako and Toshio to rest now.