Thanks to my insomnia I caught the film The Ring with Naomi Watts on HBO late late last night. I know this movie was big time a few years ago and I thought is was reasonably creepy but I did not really understand the ending. What difference did it make that the girl was out of the well and buried? The little boy said Naomi was not supposed to help her. Why did Naomi not die after the seven days? Is it because she made a copy of the tape and is passing it along? The others passed along the tape as well but they died. Confused?
I asked this very question on this Board several years ago. You weren’t supposed to help her! Now she’ll be able to do…
…exactly what she’s been doing. I don’t really see that it made any difference, except to show that she’s an ungrateful little bitch of a ghost – after they go and bury her and all.
Well, The Ring was a remake of the Japanese film Ringu which was based on a Japanese novel of the same name. I haven’t read the novel or seen the US remake.
Exactly my impression. I thought the hint was in the title.
I don’t know if this is the first time ever (the dopers will help me if I’m wrong) but Samara may be the first ever major character is a MacGuffin: the whole movie revolves around solving her mystery, but it doesn’t help anyone at all. I was impressed, but a lot of people online found the acting over melodramatic. Meh, I thought it was good, atmospheric in it’s own way.
I think the idea is that they all just assumed that helping the ghost was going to negate the effect of the tape by putting the spirit to rest.
So it’s not that getting the girl out of the well made things any worse (although they act like it does, which is what makes it confusing), it just doesn’t make things better like they thought it would. They’re not dealing with a poor, restless spirit who just needs some help moving on. They’re dealing with an evil demon from hell who you can only get off your back by tossing someone else in its way.
What Shy Guy said. It’s just a natural assumption on the kid’s part that helping Evil Dead Girl isn’t such a great idea.
Naomi Watts goes home and tells her son that he helped Samara and the kid is like “WTF would you do anything to help her? She never sleeps, Mom. Do I need to spell this out for you? Check out my wicked bruises.”
IIRC, Samara does indeed have more “power” in the sequel–perhaps due to the fact that she was no longer confined to the well and the videotape (which got imprinted with the freaky video because of its initial proximity to the well).
The sequel isn’t that great, IMO, and I liked The Ring a lot.
As an aside, this is one of the only horror movies that’s ever left me seriously on edge after I viewed it in the theatre. Even though the plot was silly and, IMO, never really goes anywhere useful, the combination of surreal imagery, jumpiness, and overall creepy tone made me uneasy for hours. I was impressed.
The only other movie I can say the same for is The Shining, and, well, that’s obviously good company.
The difference is that the others didn’t make a copy of the videotape.
(Every time you make a copy, there is more chance of the viral video being spread around, and less chance of al lthe videos being destroyed. At least that’s my take on it.)