Top 10 Times The Grudge (2020) Earned Its R-Rating

Relatively early on in the film, the newly-arrived detective Muldoon receives a jarring welcome to the force. She and her partner, Detective Goodman, are called out to a rather nasty car crash in the woods. The scene of the accident is anything but fresh - this body has clearly been here a while. Rather than a fleeting glimpse of the corpse, however, director Nicolas Pesce really invites us to appreciate the fine work of his special effects crew by lingering on the decaying cadaver. The gaping mouth, the shattered arms and twisted legs, the dry-aged skin and delicate layer of white mold - this is one seriously macabre work of art.

When her partner gets evasive about the history of the house at 44 Reyburn Drive, Detective Muldoon goes to investigate for herself. No one answers the door, but when a voice can be heard audibly crying inside, she enters to assist. Inside, she finds a messy home in disrepair, and an aging woman who is clearly in need of help. The sounds that she makes will immediately make your stomach churn, but it’s nothing compared to the shocking visual that’s to come. After asking Muldoon to feed her, the woman grabs her, revealing that her left hand is made up of a series of bloody stumps where her fingers should be. And… that blood is nasty.

When you start messing with the wellbeing of child characters in your film, you’re on the fast-track to earning yourself an R-rating. But hey, this wouldn’t be a “Grudge” movie without a spooky undead kid! Historically, it’s Toshio, a ghostly pale little boy, who’s consistently held the title of “youngest actor to give us the creeps” in the Grudge franchise. But with this 2020 instalment, young up-and-comer Zoe Fish raises the bar as Melinda Landers. It starts off with a fairly aggressive nosebleed, but in one of the most shocking moments in the film, the silent little girl suddenly starts hemorrhaging dark torrents of thick blood. Creepy little kids are a horror cinema staple, but Melinda breaks the mold.

“The Grudge” is a franchise that has never shied away from jumpscares. But even in a series with many memorable ones, this recent addition is a standout. In haunted house movies, there’s a clear dichotomy between indoors and outdoors, as well as light and darkness. Inside the spooky house is where bad things happen. Outside in broad daylight? Not so much. And that’s what makes this such a stand-out moment. As the two police detectives get into their car, the more rattled of the two receives the fright of his life as a spectral figure appears outside his partner’s window. The jumpscare was effective enough as is, but the blood ensures that it really stays with you.

When a character in a horror film starts talking about ripping their eyes out . . . aaand said character is in an insane asylum ... viewers should prepare themselves for the worst. But in this case, the patient’s hands are safely fastened to the table, and so when the interview comes to a close, the audience breathes a collective sigh of relief. The filmmaker was just toying with us; what a relief! WRONG. Cut to the same man being wheeled down the hallway in a gurney, hands once again secured, as he bleeds profusely from the two hollow sockets where his eyeballs used to be. “The Grudge” has never been a particularly gory franchise, so this scene certainly earned it some new fans!

Looking to capitalize on teenage audiences, many popular horror films rein in the blood to achieve a PG-13 rating. As such, we as viewers, regardless of age, are conditioned to expect the camera to cut away at a certain point. And when it doesn’t, it makes for quite an impact. In this particularly provocative scene, a woman throws herself down the central shaft of a stairwell; filmmaker Nicolas Pesce stays with her the whole way down, even offering us multiple viewing angles for maximum effect. On the way down, her head connects with a railing with a sickening thud before her body essentially erupts upon reaching the ground floor. The visuals are messed up, but it’s the sound effects that’ll really stay with you.

Sometimes… you don’t need to show the offending deed for it to contribute to the R-rating. Often, with truly heinous acts, the before and after is more than enough. In fact, by omitting the actual event, you force the viewer to fill in the blanks for themselves, which is sometimes even more effective than spelling out what happened. And the murder of a pregnant woman - by her husband no less - is just about one of the quickest paths to an R-rating you can take. Considering the couple spend so much of the film fixated on the pregnancy, the moment is all the more horrifying.

Filmmaker Nicolas Pesce certainly has a knack for ramping up tension, releasing it, and then hitting you over the head just when you think it’s safe. Moreover, it’s in these moments that he often goes the extra mile to really embrace the possibilities opened up by an R-rating. A man standing in the pouring rain staring into a family’s living room is usually a precursor to something going bad and fast. Then, just when you think the situation has been resolved (the man being taken away), he pulls out a gun in the car! Pesce could have said it all with the flash of gunfire seen from outside the car, but he instead shows us the head wound in all its gory glory.

Did you think that Melinda’s bloody nose was shocking? Well, you ain’t seen nothing yet! Pushing the envelope like few other horror films are willing to, “The Grudge” has a parent kill her young child. And unlike with the murder of the pregnant mother, this time, the camera doesn’t cut away. Not only do we see the mom pushing her daughter’s head underwater in the tub, but she repeatedly hits the child’s face against the bottom of the tub. The most r-rated moment in the scene, however, is the underwater shot of lips and nose hitting the floor of the tub and beginning to bleed. This movie isn’t for the faint of heart!

Remember the aforementioned woman with the bloody stumps for fingers? Well, when you’re working with an R-rating you get to do more than show them. You can show how they got like that. The scene initially plays like a moment of domestic bliss. Perhaps even a medical miracle? The deathly ill woman, detached from reality, is suddenly up-and-about preparing food in the kitchen on a sunny afternoon. Except those aren’t carrots she’s chopping up… they’re her own fingers. AND there’s a dead man on the ground just out of sight. Yikes. And that, dear horror fans… is how you not only earn yourself an R-rating, but really make the most of it.