20 Great Performances Wasted In Terrible Horror Movies

17. Lin Shaye - The Grudge (2020)

Has Lin Shaye ever not improved any movie? 

She certainly gave it her all in 2020's reboot of The Grudge, where she plays the supporting role of Faith Matheson, a dementia-stricken woman who ends up killing her husband William (Frankie Faison), slicing her own fingers off, and then leaping to her death at the hospital.

Shaye gives an intense and devastatingly sad performance here that's immediately attention-grabbing despite her relatively brief screen time.

Shaye gets to the heart of the character and mines it for every drop of feeling, but the rest of the film is a frustratingly dull, low-energy slog even with its apparently tight 94-minute runtime.

Shaye is far from the only grossly overqualified actor among the cast - there's also Andrea Riseborough, Demián Bichir, John Cho, Betty Gilpin, and Jacki Weaver - but she's nevertheless the only one to really wring much basic human interest from the snoozy script.