If anyone has seen my opinion on the original Ring movie they would know that i'm a big fan so i was curious to see what changes or additions that were to be made to this amazing horror. But Hollywood fell short and audiences were being cheated.
The story of The Ring is about a power hungry journalist who is an uptight, career driven, bad mother who discovers the legend of a video tape that can kill you in a week. With her ex-bloke and father of her child in tow she investigates the family involved with the tape in order to prevail her own death coming across interesting circumstances to do with 'creepy' dead child Samara and suicidal ponies (this bit made me chuckle so much i am going to mikey take as often as i can in this review!). None of the cast really bothered me even though at times i think that Naomi Watts appeared like she needed her inhailer rather than appearing like she was scared !*?>less. The problem with the movie was that it was never going to live up to, or even compare to the original.
Firstly, and i mention this with a snigger, the director Gore Verbinski's previous credits include Mousehunt, my question is how did producers decide to go with this guy who has never commerically worked with the horror genre and think that this was going to be ground breaking?? And with his apparent references to Rear Window and The Shining, I personally wasn't driven to think "wow!" but rather "why?" the director was straying form his own story as he was so busy trying to get a few 'cute' familier shots that only fans of the films would recognise.
I don't want to totally dismiss the film, one advantage is that it does allow people who cannot be bothered to or are not happy to read subtitles to see the film. And i guess it allowed hollywood to steal another story and claim it as thier own (!). But i have to mention the representation of the young girl Samara and why she is not a scary horror figure. First of all you see her face, she has an identity, but not only a face but that which is the face of a child, one with expressions and emotions, and in this case i found myslef sympathising with Samara rather than being scared of her. She also has a voice, one you can sympathise with and become familiar with as a child, which connotates innocence and in the case of actress Daveigh Chase sounds quite angelic. the point is we can identify her as an emotional human being, that we sympathise with and thus do not fear. And im going to have to bring it up again- the Ring original representation is far scarier as we do not see her face, hear her voice all we see is a unidentafiable mass of tangled black hair, mangled fingers, which makes her more of a mystery and thus more terrifying. Plus there are no suicidal Mr Ed's!!!
The sadest thing about The Ring is that as it is more commericial and more publicised people are going to watch this film and not the original and wreck the whole experience for themsleves. The story is increadable in both films however it is my own opinion that the original is a better interpretation. The remake uses cheap horror stunts such as gore and a jumpy soundtrack, both which are absent in the original. Nothing has been added to the film except for complicated loops in the plot, which achieve nothing but to blur the story. It seemed to me like the film could justify itself with odd imagery (throwing up unidentifyiable objects, crazy suicidal horses) but I got the impression that the film maker himself was confused about what he was trying to say. I plead to everyone who has not seen the film to watch the original first just so you can experince a horror that is truely terrifying.
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I think I'll give it a miss,great op,take care,pat.
patriciat 11.04.2003 19:45
I've seen both versions and wasnt particularly impressed with either of them but would agree the American version was much worse. Pat.t
steelhamster 11.04.2003 19:05
Yet again Hollywood has to dumb down an original classic (just like Nikita and Yojimbo) for the mass market (lets face it the american market). I loved this film and went to see the 'remake' with a heavy heart, but I was determined to watch it from the perspective of a movie for entertainment value and not some film school graduate, as sometimes good films are slated just because the reviewer (usually in national press) is a frustrated film maker themself. I have to say though, this film was a complete travesty, if they had just made the japanese version with the same japanese actors but asked them to speak english then some sense of the original would be here, but this smacked of lazy film making. Hmmmm, looks like Im reviewing it too -lol- anyway, Great accurate opinion. Nice One!
![The Ring [DVD]](http://picnica.ciao.com/uk/78488210.jpg "The Ring [DVD]")
Apr 11th, 2003
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