While often considered a remake or reboot, 2020's The Grudge is actually a loose sequel, and connects to the prior American Grudge movies. The marketing for The Grudge prior to release left most of the plot a question mark, mostly focusing on highlighting the film's scares, and unsettling atmosphere. Considering the title, and also much earlier reporting on the film, most long assumed the new Grudge was a complete reboot of the continuity, but it's actually more of a spinoff that links back to the other movies.

The Grudge franchise of course originated in Japan, and was one of many J-horror titles ported over for American audiences after the success of 2002's The Ring. The first stateside Grudge movie hit theaters in 2004, starring Sarah Michelle Gellar and other western actors in the leading roles, but retaining the original's director Takashi Shimizu and its Japanese setting. The Grudge was a hit, leading to sequel The Grudge 2 in 2006, and direct to video follow-up The Grudge 3 in 2009.

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So, after a decade-plus hibernation, The Grudge's curse is back to horrify audiences. Although it's not quite the same curse as before, those who enjoyed the prior films will surely appreciate the fact that The Grudge 2020 doesn't retcon its American predecessors out of existence.

How The Grudge 2020 Connects To Original Movies

Sarah Michelle Gellar holding a lighter up in the house in The Grudge 2004

The Grudge 2020 is set during three different time periods. The "current" time in the story is 2006, when a widowed detective named Muldoon gets drawn into a mysterious case involving a house linked to prior crimes. Along the way, we're shown flashbacks to those prior events, which took place in 2004 and 2005, and all revolved around a cursed house at 44 Reyburn Drive in a town called Cross Rivers, Pennsylvania. An obvious connection to the older Grudge movies is that they were also set in 2004 and 2006, placing The Grudge 2020's events around the same time.

There are also more explicit connections to the prior Grudges. The first comes early on, when a woman named Fiona Landers is spooked following an encounter with Kayako at her cursed home in Tokyo. Fiona flees across the ocean to her house at 44 Reyburn Drive, but ends up murdering her own family, creating her own Grudge curse. From then on, everyone who steps foot in the house is plagued by the curse, and also driven to murder and/or suicide after freaky ghost encounters with the Landers family. The events of The Grudge 2004 are also directly referenced, in a scene where Muldoon's new partner tells her about Fiona's connection to Kayako's house, and the prior incident that occurred there in 2004. He even mentions Detective Nakagawa (Ryo Ishibashi) by name. While The Grudge 2020 is by no means an intricately connected sequel, it still shows some love for the movies that paved the way.

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