And suddenly, there was ...
Posted by:
Jazz_Sue (---.bb.sky.com)
Date: June 23, 2008 01:37AM
Just been watching the Sarah Michelle Geller remake of 'The Grudge' which was, quite possibly, the biggest load of gobshite I've seen all year. The last five minutes more or less sums up the rest, really. How do you bring a scene pitting a defenceless Ms Geller against a vengeful zombie corpse to a plausible, satisfactory and suitably exciting conclusion? Simple - first, give the boyfriend a convenient cardiac arrest. Second, rifle his pockets for a weapon - in this case, a very small butane gas lighter as they've omitted to give him 9" blade-sized pockets. At this point, Ms Geller could have kicked ass with a few karate kicks, or quoted some anti-demonising spell she's memorised but we're going for plausibility here, so ... I know, we'll just insert a conveniently placed can of kerosene right in the middle of the hallway! Oh, and then after the obligatory flame-fest quickly cut to the hospital scene so we don't get a chance to ponder: 'Yeah, but from where she was she'd have been burned to a cinder anyway - and how come the boyfriend's corpse didn't get cooked?'
The end scene showed the zombie corpse reappearing, ready to throttle Ms Geller. I know how she felt, although I'd have gone for the producer myself. The only other movies I know of that used such blatant stretches of credibility were those antiquified 1930's B serials - I thought it was well and truly a thing of the past.
I mean, disregarding Dickens can you imagine stories being written in this way? Perhaps we could use the same device Jasper did with his falling piano cop-out, and introduce some alternative endings to well-known literary scenes. The trouble is, these damn authors have the plots so tightly tied up I can't think of anywhere I could do it, so maybe we can 'undo' some tragic endings. For example, Cathy was just about to peg out, when Heathcliff appeared with a Boots carrier and said ...