10 Characters Who Survived The Movie (Only To Suddenly Die In The Sequel)

The American remake of The Grudge was actually a fairly effective horror film, lead by the always wonderful Sarah Michelle Gellar. She plays Karen Davis, an exchange student and caretaker who comes upon the terrifying supernatural curse.

Karen begins to be haunted by the curse and gets her boyfriend Doug involved later on. He ends up dying in the final act, but just as the spirit is crawling towards Karen and about to kill her, she starts a fire and lights up the house. She did it! But then in an ominous ending, it's revealed that the house survived the fire, so Karen may still be haunted by Kayako after all.

The sequel, The Grudge 2, doesn't spare Karen, and Sarah Michelle Gellar returns just for the opening scene. The film picks up right where the original ended with Karen in the hospital, and within the first few minutes she runs to the roof and is thrown off to her death. That was fast, huh? So the sequel takes that ominous but subtle ending and decides that the character died almost immediately after that.