Venturing Into the Horror Genre: Tamblyn said, “I had a small part in The Ring and I really enjoyed that experience. I had never really been able to sort of carry a horror film before, and my dad did The Haunting in the 50’s and said it was one of the most amazing experiences he ever had. When I read the script I was really excited about it and wanted to do a horror film.”
Arielle Kebbel Describes Her Character in The Grudge 2: “I play Allison Fleming. She is not very attractive; she’s not very confident. She’s kind of the wallflower of the group. She’s studying over at the international high school and she’s kind of the girl you see in the background of all the pictures that wants to be a part of everything but never really is.
One day the cool girls in school, played by Teresa Palmer who is an Australian actress, and Misako, who is a Japanese pop star, they’re the cool girls in school and they take me to the grudge house. I think it’s part of an initiation to finally become part of their group, when in fact it’s kind of part of their plot to humiliate me one more time and watch me get scared in this house. And, of course, nobody plans on the grudge curse coming alive. And then everyone gets what they deserve.”
Kebbel’s description of the plot sounds a lot like one of the storylines from the original Ju-On film. “Yeah, it actually is,” said Kebbel. “What’s really interesting – when we were over there we sat and watched the Ju-On series and we were kind of… It was interesting because I think there’s moments in our movie that are scarier and more intense, and then I think there are moments in the original Ju-On that are scarier. I think that the Grudge 1 and 2 are actually better representations of Ju-On 1. Like it’s almost like they split Ju-On 1 in two and made Grudge 1 and 2.”
Tamblyn added, “A lot of people have been asking how much this film is going to mirror the sequel to Ju-On and it really barely does. Maybe one plot does, but everything else is completely changed.”
The Special Challenges of Shooting in Japan: Kebbel said everything was a challenge. “I think that the obvious thing is the time and obviously the language barrier, which puts a bearing on the time because everything takes twice as long. But I think also, depending on your mindset when you go over there, it can be one of the greatest gifts working over there because everything is - nothing is like over here.
For me it was interesting going over there and even though we do what we do here, which is make movies and you show up on set everyday whether it’s on location or in a studio, and you’re kind of used to the routine. You get out, you change, you go to hair and makeup, you get your food, you rehearse, whatever. And over there, their tradition is completely different. I think for me in the beginning that was kind of a difficult change because I wanted to embrace as much as possible, but it required change on my part to learn and accept those things. But I think that’s kind of one of the gifts I came back with, too.”
Tamblyn said, “I was really fabulously surprised to find out that you’re supposed to take your shoes off when you go inside the houses as a sign of respect so you don’t track dirt in. And they would smoke inside the houses and the sets. That’s the irony of the Japanese culture, which I appreciate very much. I really had a great time just sort of experiencing a completely different lifestyle, a completely different way of doing things. Like, the fact that this first A.D. and the second A.D. - their jobs are completely switched and that was a very strange thing to wrap your head around for a while. Like the second A.D. is on the actual set.
Sometimes things really do get lost in translation where you’re trying to explain something to the director about how you feel about a certain thing. One of the things with Shimizu-san for me was about looks. He really wanted like [gasping scared sound] - the frightened scare looks, so I had to talk to him about why I didn’t think that that was such a good idea. That was really hard because then it becomes charades because you’re like, ‘Two words: too big,’ trying to explain. Words don’t work after a while. You’re like, ‘How do I explain this to you when you don’t understand what I’m saying?’ I think there were areas there where what you were trying to explain was getting lost. But for the most part, it was pretty incredible. I think both Arielle and I picked up a pretty good amount of Japanese as far as knowing what was with the cameraman, or trying to figure out positions, where they wanted us to move for marking a scene.”
Page 2: Working with Takashi Shimizu and Timing in Horror Films
