Aubrey Davis (Amber Tamblyn) travels to Tokyo to investigate the mysterious disappearance of her sister Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) and gets caught up in the same mysterious curse that has killed so many people. With a group of others, she tries to solve and end the curse for good.<br /><br />The Grudge 2 rehashes everything from the first one and it produces only a couple of scares. The first Grudge was an average movie at best. The premise was decent but the acting was wooden and some of the scenes were really ridiculous. The Grudge 2 is even more silly and less scary than the original. Also, Scary Movie 4 has made it nearly impossible to take these films seriously and I had trouble keeping a straight face during the "scary scenes" which should encourage laughter more than fear. How Takashi Shimizu messed up his own franchise is unexplainable yet he succeeded at creating a decent atmosphere. Unfortunately, he kept the film at a slow pace with a bunch of dull characters and lame scare tactics. Clearly, he did this movie for money and I'm glad it failed.<br /><br />The screenplay was pretty bad, mainly because it made no sense and they didn't develop the characters at all. In the movie, there were three different stories going on and each of them were somehow related to "the grudge". The connections were weak and a bunch of people were killed without a real reason. They don't explain the rules of the curse very well and it ended up being a bit of blood bath because of everyone dying although the PG-13 rating kept things from getting interesting so even some of the death scenes were pretty lame. The dialog was weak and none of the characters were likable or developed well enough to truly care about.<br /><br />The acting was on par with everything else and it was a lot worse compared to the first one. Amber Tamblyn was annoyingly wooden. She moved on screen very slowly and all of her emotions seemed fake. Sarah Michelle Gellar was okay although she just had a cameo. Jennifer Beals gave the best performance, she had a few good scenes and was kind of effective. Arielle Kebbel was okay, a little bland. The rest were either horrible or just too forgettable to mention. Overall, The Grudge 2 was a disappointing sequel. It lacked a lot of things and it's not worth watching. Rating 4/10