The Grudge 2

Aubrey Davis

Aubrey Davis (Amber Tamblyn) arrives home in Pasadena, California, where she learns from her ill mother (Joanna Cassidy) that her sister Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) has been in an accident in Japan. Despite a strained relationship, Aubrey is forced to fly to Tokyo to help her sister, where she meets a reporter named Eason (Edison Chen). Aubrey is led to Karen's room, where Karen begs for her freedom. She is then strapped to her bed, and the doctors tell Aubrey she can't see her sister again until tomorrow. Outside the room, Eason confronts Aubrey in the waiting room, wanting to know if he can speak with Karen because he wants to write a story on her.. Meanwhile, in Karen's room, the lights begin to flicker as Karen tries to break free of the restraints. Kayako rises behind her just as she breaks free. The guards hear this and unlock the door, letting Karen escape into the hallway. She runs past a group of nurses, where Kayako is standing behind them. She finds herself at a dead end and turns to see the lights at the end of the hallway slowly blinking out as Kayako comes toward her. Karen manages to make it into a staircase and onto the roof. She backs up to the edge of the roof, as Kayako appears behind her and grabs her. As Aubrey and Eason are exiting the hospital, Karen falls to her death on the cement in front of them. Aubrey collapses, stunned, while Eason sees Kayako holding onto Karen's body.

Aubrey sleeps at her sister's old apartment, after she finds herself unable to tell her mother about her sister's death. Eason is watching a video, where he interviews Detective Nakagawa, when he hears a noise in the background. He slows the video down and turns up the volume, going frame by frame, when he sees Kayako looking in on Nakagawa in the background. The death rattle grows louder, forcing him to shut off the video, at which point he sees Kayako behind him in the reflection of the television. However, when he turns around Kayako is not there. He goes to Aubrey, who was told by the police that Eason is the one that pulled her sister from the burning house, and tells her of Karen's story and how he is experiencing the same things. They go to the Saeki house and Eason tells Aubrey to wait outside. While inside, Eason finds Kayako's diary, while outside Aubrey sees Kayako in the window. She goes to run in when she hears Karen's voice telling her to stay out of the house. Suddenly, a hand grabs her and pulls her in. After he reads Kayako's diary, the two go to Eason's friend's apartment, who is an expert on Japanese folklore, and decide to find Kayako's mother after being told that she was an "exorcist" of evil spirits who used her daughter as a "vessel" to trap the spirits. As Aubrey sleeps, Eason develops pictures of the Saeki house when suddenly the ink expands into the dish, making Kayako rise from it and attack Eason. Aubrey awakens the next morning and finds Eason's body in the room. She goes to pull him out when the body turns into Kayako. She jumps back and runs out of the room, all of the pictures hanging around the room show Kayako, staring at her.

Aubrey is haunted by Toshio, who plays peek-a-boo with an old man on a bus, as she travels to find Kayako's mother. She discovers Kayako's mother is an exorcist, who would feed the freed evil to her then young daughter. After Kayako appears and kills her mother, Kayako's first victim that hasn't been infected by the curse and so seems to be killed for personal reasons, Aubrey calls her own mother in Pasadena and tells her of Karen's death. She returns to the house, in an attempt to find what Kayako really wants. After seeing an image of Karen from the past climbing the stairs, she follows only to be dragged into a residual haunting, another side of the curse, watching Takeo reading Kayako's journal. Takeo suddenly lurches towards her, as Aubrey attempts to escape. She trips, breaking her ankle, and falls onto the stairs. Takeo follows her down the stairs, as she crawls desperately down them. As the house's curse obviously has grown strong enough to tear down the barrier between the residual haunting and the physical world, he grabs her and breaks her neck, just as he did to Kayako. As Aubrey tries to breathe, she is only able to make the same death rattle noise that Kayako is always forced to make. As Takeo kills his son and his cat, Kayako materializes in an unhurt, human form and watches Aubrey die after experiencing the same pain, rage and suffering Kayako went through when she herself died. Blood drips down her face, coming from her eyes and mouth and it shows a flash back of Kayako dying in the same way, with blood in the same spots.

[edit] The schoolgirls

Allison (Arielle Kebbel) is a new student at the international high school in Tokyo, and there she meets students Vanessa (Teresa Palmer) and Miyuki (Misako Uno). They take Allison to the Saeki house in order to play a prank on her. The girls convince her to enter the closet Toshio's body was stored in, and force the door closed. After Allison screams, the other girls try to open the door but can't, and Allison is unable to exit the closet until she sees Toshio and what appears to be Kayako.

Later, Allison is in class when she feels Toshio's cat brushing between her legs. She then senses human hands on her thighs. Pushing her supplies forward on her desk, she peers under her desk to find Toshio curled in a ball at her feet. As she jumps up, she realizes that he is not there, causing her to be embarrassed in front of her fellow classmates. As she sits down, she notices Toshio's cat proceeding to Miyuki's desk, and the two exchange nervous glances.

After they return to school, all three girls deal with hauntings from Toshio, the cat, and Kayako. After taking a shower in which Kayako haunts Vanessa in a fashion similar to the somewhat iconic scene in The Grudge, Vanessa then sees a ghostly image in the locker room. Miyuki leaves school for an afternoon rendezvous with her boyfriend Michael (Shaun Sipos) at a love hotel. While Michael is in the shower, Miyuki feels something grabbing her beneath the covers. She smiles and laughs, thinking it is Michael who has shortly left the shower. When she looks towards the bathroom, she sees that Michael has returned to the shower, meaning that something else is beneath the covers. Miyuki looks under the cover to see Toshio staring at her, and backs away toward the mirror behind her. Suddenly, Kayako emerges from the mirror and grabs Miyuki, pulling her within the mirror. Vanessa and Allison are later interviewed by Principal Dale (Eve Gordon) over the events surrounding Miyuki's disappearance and their trip to the haunted house. Allison is overcome and leaves followed by the principal, while Vanessa attempts to text Miyuki. Hauntings by Toshio and the cat drive her from the school and into a phone booth, where she is consumed and killed by Kayako.

Allison is again called to the principal office, where she reveals her belief that she and anyone who enters the Saeki house have been cursed. Principal Dale reveals that she went to the house, as ghostly versions of Miyuki and Vanessa appear. Principal Dale then turns into a ghost as well and advances on Allison. Allison, completely horrified, runs out of the room screaming.

[edit] Chicago

In Chicago, Bill (Christopher Cousins) has recently married Trish (Jennifer Beals), and is moving into the apartment he shares with his daughter Lacey (Sarah Roemer) and son Jake (Matthew Knight). While Lacey and her friend Sally (Jenna Dewan) are friendly with Trish, Jake is distant. The young boy is troubled when the child of his neighbors, the Flemings, moves back in after going insane. At night, he is awakened by a series of loud knockings from the Flemings apartment. Curious, he follows one of the apartments tenants and sees the person, who is wearing a sweatshirt, getting old newspapers from the trash. When the person turns around to leave, Jake hides behind an object. He then notices two pairs of feet following the person out the basement. Jake looks out, only to see that there is no one behind the person. After Bill leaves for work, Jake and Lacey leave for school, and Jake notices that all of the windows in the Flemming's apartment are covered with newspaper. Bill, doubting his wife's fidelity, returns home unexpectedly, under the pretense of having forgotten his keys, only to find Trish on the phone with a coworker she identifies as Nate. It is revealed, that Bill is squeezing his keys so hard that they cut his hands, though Trish doesn't notice.

After school, Lacey decides to show off her cheerleader outfit to Sally, who appears ill. Sally drinks then regurgitates milk. Lacey returns home to find Jake shivering in his closet, afraid because Trish and Bill have been fighting. Jake is again awakened by pounding on the walls, and upon investigation discovers his sweatshirt wearing neighbor is a young woman, who is banging her arm on the wall as she furiously cuts her own hair. After seeing the ghostly eyes of Vanessa and Miyuki staring in the window, Jake returns home and spends the night with his sister. That night Toshio appears by Sally's bed as she dies after a too large intake of milk.

The next morning, after Trish listens to the banging from next door, she begins to make breakfast in a trance. Bill, all this time having been influenced by the spirit of Takeo, accuses her of having an affair, but she does not respond. After Bill criticizes her for burning the bacon, Trish pours the oil from the pan onto his head before killing him with a blow to the head. Lacey and Jake return home to a dark and messy apartment, while the banging from next door continues. As his sister looks for a flashlight, Jake discovers his father's body. Searching for Lacey, Jake finds that she has been drowned in the tub. As he hears Trish calling his name, Jake attempts to revive his sister. An already dead Trish rises from the tub, telling him it's time for his bath, before Toshio pulls her under the water.

Jake flees his apartment as he hears screams from the Flemings' apartment. The girl in the sweatshirt turns out to be Allison, haunted by Vanessa and Miyuki, from the school in Tokyo. Through a series of flashbacks, it is learned that the ghost Allison saw in the house was actually the spirit of Aubrey Davis. Jake accuses her of bringing something back with her, and she confirms that "they" have followed her to Chicago. Allison sees Kayako climbing down the hallway stairs, and Jake shortly after sees Toshio inside the hood of Allison's sweat shirt. Kayako's hands emerge from the hood and pull Allison into her clothing, her body disappearing into it. Jake reaches for the sweatshirt as a ghostly hand grasps his arm; Kayako then rises from the hood and lurches towards him as the movie ends