Oga Tanaka in a scene from the movie, The Grudge 2. - contributed

NEW YORK (AP):

The tormented souls from The Grudge are still tormented, but they are taking their pain on a world tour in The Grudge 2.

That creepy, dead girl with the long, stringy black hair (Takako Fuji) and her little brother in his perpetual foetal position (Ohga Tanaka) are back, as is Takashi Shimizu, who directed the 2004 hit The Grudge, based on his own series of Japanese horror movies.

This time they explain the origins of the curse that dwells within that dark, secluded house. But now the haunted themselves seem to have the ability to be everywhere at once: in a girls' locker room in Tokyo, in a bathtub in Chicago, in a phone booth, in a hospital. They seem to travel through walls and water; they can control electricity and cellphone communication.

There are a couple of good jumps here and there, but we have seen this all before. And the creepy, dead girl, having been infinitely parodied (especially in Scary Movie 4), doesn't seem quite so creepy anymore.

The horror begins

Amber Tamblyn takes over as the plucky, young heroine in distress, though Sarah Michelle Gellar, star of the original Grudge, does drop-in for a cameo. It's oddly comforting, like a visit from an old friend, like seeing Karen Black or Morgan Fairchild or Adrienne Barbeau.

Tamblyn (Joan of Arcadia), as Aubrey Davis, is sent to find her older sister, Karen (Gellar), who's being treated in a Japanese hospital and is under investigation for the fire that killed her boyfriend. The two conveniently have had a falling-out, which only the shared stress of a horror movie could repair.

At the same time, several other disparate characters have found themselves similarly victimised.

There's Allison (Arielle Kebbel), an American newcomer at an international high school in Tokyo. Hoping to fit in with the mean girls (Teresa Palmer and Misako Uno), who wear their plaid school uniform skirts extra short, she agrees to accompany them to that famously haunted house where all those people have died. Bad stuff ensues.

Meanwhile, in Chicago, weird things start happening when Trish (Jennifer Beals) moves in with her widower fiancé, Bill (Christopher Cousins) and his two kids. Things go bump in the night, big sis comes home in her itty-bitty cheerleader outfit and finds all the lights have been turned off. By now, you get the point: The Grudge 2 is less about fear than it is about faint titillation.