Sarah Michelle Gellar

KaDee Strickland, who co-stars in the upcoming supernatural horror film The Grudge, told SCI FI Wire that she was reluctant at first to sign on right after finishing Anacondas: The Hunt for the Blood Orchid. "I read the script and liked it, and then I was like, ’OK, I’ve just done Anacondas. What’s this going to look like?’" Strickland said in an interview. "What is the new challenge of this? [But] when I saw [the original Japanese movie Ju-On] and what [director Takashi Shimizu] was able to do with that budget and with that cast and all of that, I thought, ’Wow, this is going to be really exciting.’"

The Grudge, the English-language remake of Shimizu’s hit Japanese film Ju-On, follows a supernatural curse that spreads from person to person. Shimizu also directs the remake, which is also set in Tokyo, and Sarah Michelle Gellar stars alongside Jason Behr, Clea DuVall, Bill Pullman and Strickland. "It’s very scary," Strickland said. "I play a businesswoman who has lived in Japan, and her family’s coming over. So I am sort of the seasoned, cultured girl over in Japan. She’s a businesswoman gal, and it’s just so funny, because I’d never said a lick of Japanese in my life before, and I’m not Southern in the picture, so that was also going to be fun, to have to speak Japanese and not have a Southern accent. There were all kinds of twists and turns in that job for me. But this character basically comes into contact with this cursed house and as a result of it is affected by ’the grudge.’"

Stickland added that she never shared a single scene with Gellar. "She has a completely separate plotline, but she’s an absolute sweetheart," the actress said. "She’s hysterical. She’s just a very funny girl. Sarah had [the language] down within a day. She’s that girl. ’Japan and a wig? No problem. You want to get on a train? You want a cab? How do you want to talk? I’ll learn what that means. I’ll order ... miso [Japanese soup]. ... Blah blah blah.’ And I’m just sitting there like, ’Thank God she did that.’ It’s crazy. But then you pick it up, because I fell in love with it, so I couldn’t do anything but pick it up after a while." The Grudge spreads into theaters on Oct. 22.