The Grudge Reboot Scores A Rare F CinemaScore

Sony’s The Grudge reboot has the distinction of being among the first films to open in theaters in the new year, but the Nicolas Pesce-directed horror film can now claim another distinction as well and it’s not a good one. The Grudge has officially received an F CinemaScore, making it only the 20th film to receive the grim “failing grade” distinction from the audience-polling metric. It is also the first since Darren Aronofsky’s film Mother! in 2017 to receive the F grade. This F CinemaScore lines up with the film’s lackluster Rotten Tomatoes scores, which are currently sitting at 19% for both Tomatometer and Audience Score.

In The Grudge, “After a young mother murders her family in her own house, a detective attempts to investigate the mysterious case, only to discover that the house is cursed by a vengeful ghost. Now targeted by the demonic spirits, the detective must do anything to protect herself and her family from harm.” It’s a twist on the original film, which told the story of a man who murders his family when he discovers that his wife has fallen in love with another man. In that original film, the spirits of the household are so powerful, they return from the grave to kill the man responsible for the horrific crimes and, thus, birthing a curse that extended well past familial connections to the spirits going on to kill anyone who inhabited the house.

Even with the dismal fan and critical reception of The Grudge reboot the expansive franchise probably isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The franchise itself includes a dozen films in addition to novels, comic books, and video games and there were even reports last summer that Netflix was developing a TV series adaptation of the concept. On top of that Pesce himself has said previously that he’d be interested in exploring the story even further, potentially taking the concept into different timelines.

“I think the overarching thing would be to take it to more places than just Japan and America, and potentially even leave the modern era,” Pesce explained to Bloody Disgusting’s The Boo Crew podcast. “This is something to me…the Grudge is not a thing that happened once, it’s been happening forever. It’s just a matter of revealing when and where that happened. I think that there’d be something cool in going way far back and doing something that’s less contemporary and seeing what shape this sort of thing has taken the form of in other forms and other places.”

The Grudge is in theaters now.