March 22, 2016

Last week, I jumped feet first back into the RING franchise by treating myself to a double bill of RINGU and its sequel RINGU 2. Because things get confusing with the remaining Japanese entries in the franchise, I decided to jump this week right into the 2002 American remake of THE RING by Gore Verbinski and its 2005 sequel THE RING TWO. I have vague memories of seeing THE RING in theaters when it was being touted as “the scariest movie since THE EXORCIST.” I’d never seen its sequel, so I was excited to see what these versions had to offer and see how they’ve held up. The verdict?

Well, it’s hard not to compare the American RING to its Japanese counterpart. In that respect, it’s a successful remake in that it takes the basic key beats and plot lines from the original, expands upon a lot of them and makes a different enough film from its predecessor to stand on its own, which is exactly what any good remake should strive to do. It totally works as a horror movie, and a lot of people cite the 2002 American film to be the best of the entire franchise. But it didn’t work for me then, and it still doesn’t work for me now. And I’ll delve into exactly why in a bit. First, the plot of this one.

The introduction scene is pretty much exactly as it is in the Japanese version. This is right before Verbinski would helm the giant PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN movies for Disney, so it’s fairly obvious from the way the opening scene is orchestrated that he absolutely knows what he’s doing and has the ability to craft not only a terrifying scene, but probably one of the scariest scenes of the 2000’s. Setting up the urban legend of the mysterious tape, Becca is sleeping over her friend Katie’s house when she tells her friend the myth about the VHS tape that once you watch it, you’ll get a telephone call warning you that you’ll die in one week! Katie acts terrified and says that exactly a week ago, her and a group of their friends saw the tape at a cabin. It turns out they were both just trying to scare each other, but when the phone abruptly rings, Katie admits that it was true. They did watch a tape but none of them believed in the story.

Sure enough, the TV turns on by itself, there are puddles of water on the floor and before Katie can scream, her life is cut short. Rachel (Niomi Watts) is a reporter that begins investigating the story when she overhears some of the kids talking about it at Katie, her niece’s, funeral. Her son Aiden was very close with Katie, but one of his teacher’s points out to Rachel that he’d been doing dark drawings of Katie’s demise a week before her actual death. So yeah, he’s a weird freaky kid. And kind of annoying. His dad is Noah, a photographer and Rachel’s ex who helps her on her quest to discover the origins of the tape, conveniently after she shows it to him, hence infecting him too.

From there it follows the basics of the original, but deviates in the backstory. Samara is the little girl from the well. And unlike the original, her or her mother don’t have physic abilities, which for me was one of the freakiest aspects of the Japanese one. She is inherently evil, she hates her adopted father’s horses and she was thrown down the well by her mother shortly before her suicide. Rachel and Noah assume that the only way to stop her is to set her spirit free. But as Aiden says, “you weren’t supposed to let her out!”

There’s nothing wrong with the American version of THE RING and I completely understand why people like it. For me, I just don’t find the cute, cherub faced Samara scary. The backstory is overly convoluted. And at least in the Japanese sequel RINGU 2, we know she was able to stop people’s hearts with her physic abilities, and she was also pure evil. Something for me gets lost in translation here, and also, the over exaggeration at the way her victims faces look goes for shock scares rather than genuine ones. (Sorry, Rick Baker!) When Sadako came out of the TV in the final scene of RINGU, I was terrified! And I’m not alone! If you look at the prank video I posted last week, for Japanese teens, the mere sight of a scene from the movie would send them into hysterics! I don’t feel that with “Samara” for whatever reason.

I was hoping that maybe the American sequel would be as wacky and crazy as the Japanese one. After all, this one was helmed by original RINGU director Hideo Nakata. But alas, this one… well, it’s just terrible. It takes place 6 months after the events of the first film and Rachel and Aiden has started new lives in Portland. But when a young teenager is killed under mysterious circumstances after watching a video tape, she’s well aware that Samara is back and continuing her reign of terror.

Only, she’s looking for Rachel and Aiden? From what I gather, I think she wants to be reborn and take over Aiden’s body? But you’ll have to sit through several intended-to-be-scary set pieces before you get to that conclusion. Like a bizarre scene in the car where Rachel and Aiden are attacked by a bunch of CGI deer. (And I thought the horse thing in the first one was stupid, but this takes the cake!)

Then child services gets involved when, you know, Rachel tries to drown Aiden in the bath because she sees him as Samara! Oh! And it turns out Samara was adopted as a baby, so Rachel seeks out her birth mother because when she was a baby, she tried to drown her. Get it? That’s why Samara is scared of water. (Origin!) I was delighted that her crazy mother was a 2 minute cameo by the original Carrie White herself Sissy Spacek!

I think the main reason the J-horror thing didn’t last very long is because these American remakes just could not properly translate what was scary about the original films for a completely different type of audience. Things that a Japanese culture finds terrifying might not be frightening for Americans. And vice versa! The best thing to come out of that remake craze is that it enabled a lot of the original Japanese horror movies to get proper DVD releases here in the States. While I love the original two RINGU movies much more than these American releases, the American ones have their fans too! If you want a full break down on the entire RING franchise, you can check out Alyse’s breakdown right here.

This is not the last we’ve seen of Sadako!