The Ring

The Ring actually did more for popularizing Japanese horror than many people would actually believe. Starting off its lifespan back in 1991 when it was a novel series created by Koji Suzuki. It was successful enough to start getting film adaptations based on itself, the first major one being the 1998 Japanese horror film titled Ringu directed by Hideo Nakata, which was successful enough on a critical and box office level to achieve popularity even outside of Japan and garnered the attention of the west. It began to popularize the resurgence of Japanese horror to the rest of the world (coining the term J-horror) and even helped inspire several other western remakes of famous Asian horror films like The Grudge, Dark Waters, and The Eye. The Ring was the reason all of this happened and it too got its own American remake in 2002, which also made a decent impression on audiences. After the sudden death of her niece, Rachel Keller (played by Naomie Watts) tries to solve the mystery behind her unexplained death while trying to take care of her son, Aidan (played by David Dorfman), who has become quite quiet and distant from his mother since the incident. Upon further research, she discovers a lot of people have been dying in a similar fashion and they all connect back to a supposed cursed video tape. Upon watching the tape, she is messaged by a spirit saying she’ll die in seven days, just like the rest of them. Accidentally getting her son and ex-boyfriend Noah (played by Martin Henderson) into this situation and with only a week left until her death, Rachel needs to uncover the secrets behind this tape, what this angry spirit is and why they are so bent on exacting revenge. With relatively new director, Gore Verbinski, behind the film, this version of The Ring managed to thrive pretty nicely in another part of the world, doing well critically, being one of the highest grossing horror movie remakes of the time, and even added a new monster to the line-up of classic horror names.

Bringing a Japanese horror movie into a new environment and even a new culture will come with a lot of changes and transitioning elements that need to be either fixed or re-appropriated to make the movie its own thing and to make the reason for the culture change worth it. Since the Japanese movie changed a lot from its original source, the American version could have altered even more to the point where it truly was its own thing, but the movie does seem to follow the essential beats from the original story pretty closely. It seems like it was a key element from behind the scenes to capture a lot of what the original film was going for with its presentation, which results in this movie feeling pretty different from other traditional American horror films. It doesn’t feature a lot of typical jump-scares, gore, or a lot of screen-time to the actual threat, instead it relies on its slow build-up, hints of its scary imagery (which makes it all the more noticeable and shocking when they are showcased) and its morose atmosphere. Even how the movie denounces any typical chances of fixing the supernatural problem are nice changes included by screenwriter, Ehren Kruger that add more to this movie (making the ghost just not want to stop regardless of finding peace is far creepier) and makes it feel more like a cryptic story or cautionary tale told throughout the ages instead of just a generic scary flick. One of its key strengths is in the pacing of the scares; where the movie is solely dependent on its uncomfortable ghostly presence to the point that it can hold off on its monster until literally the last few minutes of the film. The payoff with the threat is one of the better moments of the film and is a moment that has stayed in horror history for offering something not only different within its own movie, but throughout other versions as well. The problem with this layout is while it functions well in theory with how the movie paces out its mystery of what’s going on, it also results in things being pretty uninteresting for the majority of the time. It’s a movie that does leave some answers unresolved, which is usually for the better with this type of ghost story, but since this story is packed with details about the conflict, the resolution needs to at least be clear which it unfortunately isn’t.

Another issue with how the story plays out is its complete lack of emotional connection with its characters. Its pretty common for horror movies within any culture or environment to not have very interesting or even likeable characters at the focus (as the creativity behind the scares and atmosphere are usually given more focus), but for a story like this that feels pretty classic ‘’urban legend ghost story-like’’, it would need some characters that people want to see get out of the situation. In this version, while the characters aren’t awful, they don’t really have anything to go off of either. Despite Naomie Watts being a pretty competent actress, she doesn’t really leave that much of an impression with this role. She’s just kind of stuck playing the typical mother role you would see in any other movie, which could be fine if she had any connection with her child. In a movie where a mother/child relationships seem pretty important, the complete lack of chemistry between the two is really unfortunate, not helped out by the child in this movie being portrayed as a stereotypical ‘’Sixth Sense’’ monotone type of character. It’s a trope that is already hard to pull off, but it really doesn’t work in this movie as it feels unneeded and makes the kid just feel unrealistic. The movie is thankfully small in its roster of characters, so it doesn’t waste time with pointless side roles, but outside of a brief cameo from Brian Cox who is a little unnerving in his scenes, they don’t do much and they absolutely don’t suck the audience in anymore. The only role that has any meat to it is the little girl as the main threat. She has an appropriately creepy yet unassuming look to her before and after she’s transformed, the actress Daveigh Chase (who most people will recognize as Lilo in Lilo and Stitch and Chihiro from Spirited Away) does a great job as the performance both physically and verbally to portray this kid with enough silent wickedness to get across her true intentions behind an unassuming appearance, her backstory is well laid-out (with just the right amount kept secret to keep the mystery up), her reveal near the end is a great moment to build-up to, and the fact that she doesn’t stop despite the protagonists trying to help her just makes her far more dangerous and unpredictable, which just makes her more interesting.

In trying to replicate the energy of the original Japanese film as well as changing the traditional feeling of a typical Western horror movie and making it more akin to that of a J-horror, it needed to do more than pace itself in a different way. The movie has this strange blue and black filter constantly over the entire movie which makes the environments look ugly and rainy by nature. It gives the entire film this somber yet relentlessly wet and dreary atmosphere which does assist in certain moments in giving moments this feeling of unease. While it can be a little overbearing at times which results in a lot of the movie looking unpleasant, it is helped out by some pretty good cinematography and scary imagery handled by Bojan Bazelli. A lot of the shots in the film are well composed and appropriately quiet and empty, they capture this feeling of isolated silence that this type of movie requires, and it’s helped out by the movie relying on a lot of scares that don’t use cheap loud noises, instead banking on building this uncomfortable feeling among its audience through what its showing. A lot of the disturbing imagery is very much like that; the contents of the tape showing any of the quick snippets of what happened to the victims aren’t overdrawn or insanely grotesque, but rather leave a sinking pit in your stomach and therefore leave more of an impact on the audience. The score by Hans Zimmer, along with Henning Lohner and Martin Tilman is well composed and surprisingly light and hopeful in many moments of the film through the elegant piano and sweeping strings, but it does add a sophisticated creepiness to the entire picture and is effectively uncomfortable when it needs to be.

The Ring laid out the groundwork for other foreign horror films to be introduced to the Western region of the world and made it so that these Americanized remakes could have some credibility if they know what they’re doing and know how to translate something from one culture to the other. This movie does have its fair share of faults; it arguably isn’t anything that special in terms of horror, but it has enough pros that showed it not only knew how to emulate a similar atmosphere and build-up to the scares like the original Japanese story did, but also showed that other stories could do this kind of thing also. While its debatable whether everybody likes the American versions of these J-horror stories, it at least gives people a chance to check them out along with their original versions. Decide for yourself which one is worthy of your time and whether or not this is something you’d risk death to check out.