Too Grunge for this Scene?

"Beloved" by Toni Morrison, starts off generally a lot like your typical "revengeful ghost" story. With the ghost being of a murdered person of importance, usually in a cruel or unusual way and/or being a child. The ghostly presence that appears in "Beloved" happens to have both of those dangerous characteristics, being the ghost of a baby killed by her mother. This trope of ghosts and the supernatural continues throughout and is even thoroughly enhanced have a believed human manifestation of the dead child arises in the form of "Beloved."

As I was thinking of movies that could compare to this sort of vengeful ghost trope, the first to pop into my head was "The Grudge." Though the story line is much different, a mentally ill man who kills his wife and child out of jealousy, the appearance of the ghost(s) (the dead wife and child) happen in almost the same ways. They, all the ghosts aforementioned, are all angry about not only being murdered, but being murdered by the people they love.

Roger Ebert described 'The Grudge" as a movie that "rigidly followed the old-age formula of horror movies" on his website http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-grudge-2004, which is probably the exact reason that this movie is a good tool of comparison to "Beloved." Not at all saying that "Beloved" has a typical story line, because that is very far from the truth. This movie is good comparison tool because of both it's similarities and differences with the book, and there are plenty of each. Along with all the similarities I've listed about another is the manifestation and the ghosts. It is very clear that in "Beloved" the book's namesake is believed to be the dead baby's manifestation, and in "the grudge" something similar happens where the dead boy is believed to have been seen. 

The major differences between the two, though, are basically how the ghosts are resolved or put to rest. In "Beloved," for example, there is finality, a peaceful ending to the story of Beloved and the hold she had on the main character's lives. But in "the Grudge" the hauntings continued, it had to, so that the film industry could milk all the money it could off of this story.         

Secondary Source link : http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-grudge-2004