Hey, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab.
This guy’s one of our most reliable spies. The week before release... maybe two... he sees all. And now he’s back with a pair of reviews for THE RING. Why more than one review? Well... I’ll let him explain:
Heya, PoleOfJustice again with not one, but two RING reviews.
Why two, you may ask? Well, because much of what I have to say about RING is so intensely spoiler filled that I felt compelled to write a second one. So there.
First off, the spoiler free one.
RING is certainly the best made serious horror film America has produced since...well, since ever. I was worried. Not just because I've seen the original RINGU about 48 kerjillion times, and didn't want to see one of my favorites BuFu'd by an American remake. No, I was worried because it was being directed by one Gore Verbinski, who has the execrable THE MEXICAN as his "best" film so far. Uh-Oh.
Well, I needn't have worried. THE RING is refreshingly free of self-referential "irony," bad American over-the-top-isms, and most of the other horseshit that pollutes what passes for the pathetic little bitch that American horror cinema has become. It's not afraid to take itself seriously, it (mostly) doesn't insult the audience's intelligence, and is the only big-budget horror film in recent (and not so recent) memory that knows what all the masters of horror films of the past knew: what you can imagine as an audience member is a LOT worse than anything they can show you.
The opening, for fans of the original, is shot for shot. Not a good sign. Fortunately, it ends up diverting nicely, and really, how else do you do that kind of scene? Which leads to the problem/concept of remakes.
Remakes, as such, aren't a bad idea. Like cover songs, sometimes familiar material can be a perfectly good launching pad for a well put together piece of work. It's just that remakes lately, particularly horror remakes, have blown serious goats. DeBont's THE HAUNTING would have been crap even without the existence of the stupendous original (when in the HELL is that gonna come out on DVD, by the way?) So while remakes have gotten a bad rep lately, THE RING doesn't deserve your ire. Now, DreamWorks' sitting on the American release of the original...that's a whole other story. But I digress.
Naomi Watts is Rachael, a reporter investigating an urban legend about a videotape that kills its viewers seven days after they view it. The remarkably Baldwin-esque Martin Henderson is Noah, her estranged lover/father of her son. The son in question is played by David Dorfman, who does a fine job with the unfortunately irritating character that the screenwriter saw fit to include.
So just to get it out of the way, what's wrong with this fine film? Well, the kid, mostly. Unfortunately. As I mentioned before, the kid actor does as well as he can with what he's been stuck with, but the character is frustratingly unnecessary. Not to mention enormously contrived. Take the kid from SIXTH SENSE, make him talk like a zombie, have him stare at everything like he's undead, have him say prophetic stuff, etc. It's the one (very) sour note in the proceedings, and it begs for the cutting room floor. And it's a little irritating the way Verbinski makes the characters repeat things to themselves as they discover them, as if we can't read or figure it out ourselves.
But enough of that. Even though I knew precisely where this was all going, I was still intrigued. The mystery unfolds in a markedly different manner than the original, but in such a way that it actually (gasp) embellishes the story, deepens it in a way that is not only very different from the original, but doesn't feel tacked on, even to this RINGU geek. Wow.
Almost no gore or violence. There is an incident on a ferry that involves livestock that is really, really unsettling, all the more so because it's not necessarily supernatural. It's just unsettling. Cool. The film's PG-13, but kicks considerably more ass than any and all big-budget R rated horror of the last, Hell, 20 years. Granted, there's not a whole lot of competition (when the best a genre can offer is SCREAM, we're all in trouble,) but it does help make THE RING a remarkable film experience, above and beyond its ability to make you stain the theatre seats.
Differences? Well, fundamentally, the original RINGU was very minimalist, very deliberately paced, and achieved its atmosphere by showing you everyday settings slowly, so as to let the meaning sink in. THE RING isn't nearly as methodical, which, let's face it, it couldn't be. No major studio was gonna make THAT film. This is the fundamental difference between the two versions, and it makes them different enough that they can both comfortably exist in the same sphere, which is ultimately all you can ask from a good remake.
OK, now on to the spoilers. And when I say spoilers, I mean SPOILERS. Not just for THE RING, but also for THE RING VIRUS (the Korean remake) and, to a lesser extent, DARK WATER. I'm assuming you already know how the story turns out, so if you want to go into it fresh, FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, STOP READING HERE.
OK then.
One of the things that struck me about THE RING was not just the similarities to the original RINGU (which, of course, are a given,) but how much Verbinski had also borrowed from RINGU director Hideo Nakata's follow-up, DARK WATER. While the story of a ghost of a little girl who died in a well is inherently going to be, well, moist, there are many clear visual and thematic lifts from the latter film: the way water damage stains are an atmospheric sign of dread, the little rivulets running down anything and everything that's about to kill (or at least scare the shit out of) the characters, etc. There's even somewhat of a single mother neglecting her child, while said child draws pictures of dead kids, which is one of the central images of DARK WATER. Even the shots of downtown Seattle bear a striking resemblance to the decrepit apartment building in that film. Too much to be a coincidence. This isn't a problem, mind you, just highly noteworthy for people following Nakata's career, and for those who are interested in how the story translates from there to here.
The deaths are, dare I say it, handled a little better than the original. The "melting" earlier reviewers referred to is actually the look of a waterlogged corpse, which, considering the origins of the ghost in question, makes perfect sense. The audience only gets flashes of the bodies, too, which makes them that much creepier. The final girl coming out of the TV scene is better in the original, though. Frankly, you see a little too much of the dead girl's face, which looks like, well, like the face of a ghost. We've seen that before. The psychotically wide-open eye viciously glaring at the victim is much, much more effective. And the whole sequence is considerably more stylized, which, while cool looking, isn't creepy. Just cool looking.
The horses going nuts thread in the film is an embellishment that actually embellishes. I was worried, since the Korean remake of RINGU has embellishments that are jaw droppingly stupid. (Sadako's a hermaphrodite? What genius came up with THAT?)
The differences/additions in the film didn't stick out. Considering that I'm intimately familiar with the original, that's really damned impressive, and says loads about the storytelling skills on display here. Overall, this is probably the best American pure horror film since THE CHANGELING. Thank God.
Pole out.
I’m really curious to see how this film looks in its final release version. People seem pleased so far, even the geeks who really know the original films well. That’s great to hear, isn’t it?
"Moriarty" out.
