Hopefully the thread title gives you the idea: I want and welcome spoilers. If you are spoiler-phobic, don’t read this thread.
Okay. Here’s the deal: I’m a wuss. I’m apparently too thin-skinned for particularly well-made psychological horror films–here I am, at 30, and I have to say “They give me nightmares.” They do. Dammit. Fortunately, the very good psych horror films are rare (typical horror is bland and boring, thankfully). But–I love a good movie, and I’ve heard so much good stuff about The Ring, I really would love to see it. BUT…I fear seeing it. Yes…I suck.
Now that it’s in heavy HBO rotation, I’m itching to watch it. But I don’t want any surprises that are going to scare my psyche into sleeplessness, so I appeal to my Doper comrades to tell me as much of the film as you would–hell, give me a summary/synopis/play by play of the whole thing if you want. If nothing else, at least I’ll know what the Big Deal is, and maybe, knowing ahead of time what to expect, I can watch and know when to turn away. (Hubby has warned, though, that he won’t be comforting me if I watch it and get freaked out!)
This is what I know: You watch a video, and it kills you in a week. (Derrr? How does a video kill people?) You get phone calls from some scary whispering kid saying “Seven days.” And then there’s some scene about a horse running off a boat and jumping into the ocean, getting chopped up by the boat’s turbines in bloody detail. That’s really all I know. Who dies? Do they succeed in defeating the, uh, video? What’s the deal?
Thanks in advance for Helping Your Neighborhood Wuss today.
While I know there are people who think this is “the scariest movie I’ve ever seen” I’m baffled by that. The movie is creepy but of the 115 minutes, only 5 or so, broken into four scenes are actually scary. The rest of the movie is filled with bizzare, sometimes gross images, a neat story, and tension that’ll make you worry about the movie. (yes, I liked it despite it not being scary.)
The characters you’ll care about are: Rachel Keller- “the mom”;
Aidan Keller- " The kid"; and Noah Clay " the guy".
Scary scene #1. (5-10 seconds)
Adin’s cousin, Katie Embry, sees the tape and dies. They show a very brief view of her horrible body- in advance state of decay- in a closet.
Scary scene #2. (1 minute)
The horse scene will probably make you jump if you jump at loud sharp noises. There’s a jarring jump-worthy crash when the horse kicks the stalls trying to get out.
Scary scene #3. (2 minutes)
They discover that the well that the girl was pushed into is in the floor of the cabin where the video tape was found. Rachel goes into the well to look for the dead girl. It seems for a bit that she might get trapped in there too, because the cover starts moving. (she doesn’t) But she does find the body. ick.
Scary scene #4. (two minutes)
It seems like everything will be ok after the well scene, yet the movie goes on, alerting us that it was a false happy ending, so we should all begin to worry about the characters again. Noah goes to his place, and the girl from the well climbs out of the video on the tv and kills him. He looks really gross like Katie did.
Final score:
Noah- dead
Aidan- alive
Rachel- alive
Okay, here’s the deal: I’m not going to give you a play-by-play, because the movie works pretty well at just being moody and creepy even if you know what’s going to happen. I enjoyed it a lot more the second time I saw it, when I knew what was going to happen. The first time, I’d just been waiting for horrible stuff to jump out at me, and it was kind of a disappointment when not enough horrible stuff jumped out at me. The second time, I dug it.
It implies a lot more than it shows outright; for instance, the horse scene you mention is not shown “in bloody detail.” It’s disturbing, because it’s unexpected and all, and you do see some blood in the water, but it’s not gory. There’s very little gore in it. I can’t remember the exact sequence of events, so this may be out of order:
Opening sequence: creepy and suspenseful, but nothing terrible on-screen. Don’t get too attached to Joan of Arcadia, though.
The wake sequence afterwards: Naomi Watts is talking to her sister about her niece (the aforementioned Joan). It’s a fairly normal, boring conversation until BAM – the sister has a flashback to when she discovered the body. It’s only a few seconds long, but it’s pretty gruesome. IMO it’s the biggest shock of the movie. Be forewarned.
After this, you’re golden for a good long while. Watts finds some photos with the faces blurred out, which is weird and all but no big.
The video: Watts goes to a cabin in the mountains and watches the videotape. The video is more pretentious art student film than genuinely scary. Worst moments: writhing dismembered fingers, and a finger getting pierced by a nail. You can do a google search to see the movie online if you want to see it beforehand. After Watts sees the movie, the phone rings and she hears the voice, but you knew that was going to happen.
The ex-husband: Watts gets him to watch the video. This whole bit is kind of creepy and gray and miserable and you’re waiting for something horrible to happen, but it doesn’t.
The video lab: Watts takes the tape to a sophisticated editing lab and plays around with it to get more clues. This is just a cool scene, not scary. No worries.
The son: Watts wakes up one night and hears the weird music from the video playing. She discovers that her son has watched the video. She panics and freaks out. The phone rings, and it’s the voice, for her son. Nothing scary,
The nightmare: Watts has a nightmare about being Samara (the little girl). She starts vomiting and coughs up a pair of electrodes (the kind that are strapped to your chest). IIRC she coughs up some of Samara’s hair as well. There are other indications that she’s under “the curse:” like nosebleeds and she’ll wake up with handmarks on her arm.
The ferry ride: The scene you mentioned. Watts is aboard the ferry, a horse freaks out and jumps off and is killed by the boat’s rotors. As I said, it’s disturbing but not especially graphic. The CG shot of the horse jumping off the boat is more violent than anything else.
At the ranch the first time: There’s loads of spikey equipment all over the place that you just know is going to do something horrible at any moment, but it doesn’t.
In the attic of the barn: Watts & ex-husband find where Samara stayed. It’s dismal but not scary. Even when they start peeling stuff off the walls. This is mostly back-story and exposition.
At the ranch at night: Watts wanders around the house and eventually goes upstairs to find Brian Cox (Samara’s father) in the bathtub with some elaborate suicide device involving water, car batteries or a generator, jumper cables, etc. He kills himself and it’s somewhat violent with all the sparks and such, but not gory. You see the tiles in the bathroom have been cracked where his head hit the wall, and there’s blood there.
Back at the cabin: Watts and ex-husband pry up the floorboards and find the old abandoned well. Watts goes down into the well. She finds clawmarks and fingernails on the wall, and has a flashback to the video where the finger gets pierced by a nail. She has other brief flashes of the video and of Samara. Then she finds Samara’s body, which would be gruesome as it’s all decomposed, but this is supposed to be a tender moment. Everything is uplifting now, and there’s a denouement with her and her ex-husband outside the well, after the police have come.
The End. OR IS IT?: You know it’s not over because they show the main character taking a shower, which is always a sign that something’s going to happen and there’s still more movie left. Watts has a talk with her creepy son, who delivers the movie’s big twist. (Still nothing jump-out-at-you-scary, just surprise plot development scary.)
The Ex-Husband: Ex-husband is back at his loft, and the TV suddenly turns on. He hears the creepy ring video music. He can’t turn off the TV. (The movie ineptly cuts back and forth here between the loft and Watts trying desperately to reach him. All the scary stuff happens with ex-husband.) The video plays as before, except instead of cutting right after the shot of the well at the end, we see someone start to climb out of the well. She crawls out of the well and slowly crawls along the ground towards the screen. Then, as you might expect, she crawls out of the screen and into the apartment. She’s not gory, just dirty with long black hair over her face. (I think we see one of her eyes, too, but that may be just the Japanese version.)
Even with all this and all these spoilers, there’s an additional surprise in this scene, and I feel bad just coming out and saying it:
Ex-husband is getting away, when Samara’s image suddenly leaps forward, as if you’d done a jump-cut edit with a videotape, to close the distance.
Watts reaches the apartment and makes it upstairs. There’s nothing too bad here, but IIRC you see a very brief flash of the ex-husband’s body like with the niece in the beginning of the film. I could just be imagining that, but in any case it’s not nearly so bad as the first time you’ve seen it.
A final tip: if you’re watching it at home, take the phone off the hook, or turn off the ringer. A friend of mine got a phone call in real life right after Watts finished watching the tape for the first time. She did not handle it well.
Thank you both for the great details and descriptions! Yes–sounds creepy, but not gory. The better films usually are.
I caught a few minutes of it this afternoon (this is when hubby walked by and said “Don’t come to me if you get freaked out”), and saw Naomi talking to Noah (didn’t know it was the ex), and then he ended up watching the video. I saw some of the editing scene, but that’s when my nerves checked out and I changed to Animal Planet. Yay! Happy, sappy images of animal rescue…
So…let me see if I’ve got this. The video itself is an artistic snuff film? Shows The Creepy Girl (Samara) being tortured? And so…if you watch the video, you’re so haunted by the spirit of one eeeeeeevil (but justifiably pissed) little girl that you die? (How are the people dying? Do they just show up dead-like-it’s-been-6-months one day?) And…Naomi was spared because she, uh, released Samara’s spirit by discovering her body?
Which leaves the next question of perhaps The Biggest Spoiler…somehow Noah is more closely connected to Samara’s death and that’s why she came after him anyway?
Ok, you said you didn’t mind spoilers, so here goes…
The cabin where the cousin and her friends were staying (where they found the tape) was later built over the well where Samara had died. At some point it’s mentioned that Samara was capable (when she was alive) of projecting images from her mind onto X-ray films (and into other people minds, which is what caused her parents to banish her to the barn, made all the horses freak out, and eventually drove Samara’s mom to kill her), so it’s assumed that the tape contains an image of the rage, fear and pain she experienced as she died.
How the tape kills in seven days, and why seven days? This is explained better in the US version than the originally Japanese. As Rachel is describing what happened to Samara (mom strangled her and dumped the body down the well, but Samara was still alive and spent her last days floating in the darkness trying to claw her way out), Noah comments “my god, how long could someone survive like that?” Rachel: “seven days.” I don’t think it’s ever specifically stated, but I believe she kills by causing the victim to experience the seven days that she spent dying, all compressed into a single instant, which is why the bodies look so decomposed and terrified.
As for the title, one character comments that “the last thing you ever see is the ring” the ring being the ring of light from the top of the well, the last thing Samara ever saw before her mother lowered the lid and sealed her inside.
Why did Noah die and not Rachel? This, IMO, is the weakest part of the story (it’s not done much better in the original, either). Samara wants everyone to know what she went through, so it turns out that the only way to save yourself is to make a copy of the tape and have someone else watch it. Rachel did this inadvertantly by making the copy she gave to Noah. When she realizes what saved her, we go to the ending scene with Rachel and Aiden together in her office’s A/V room, Rachel guiding Aiden’s hand over the buttons so he can make a copy. Aiden asks “what will happen to person we give this to?” Rachel doesn’t answer (the Japanese version was a little darker about this. The last scene is the mom calling up her father and saying “dad? I need you to do a favor for Yoichi.” At the start of the next movie, the grandfather is dead).
So…let me see if I’ve got this. The video itself is an artistic snuff film? Shows The Creepy Girl (Samara) being tortured?QUOTE]
nooooot quite. the video has that “artistic snuff film” quality. the idea is that the video was … well, there are tapes of Samara when she was in a mental institution…I guess the idea is that her horrible death and her ghost altered the tape and thus created the images of bad omens. She isn’t really shown being tortured, as i said - they’re just various clues, you could say - we see the mom experiencing them the closer she gets to figuring out what happened to Samara.
[QUOTE=Ruffian]
(How are the people dying? Do they just show up dead-like-it’s-been-6-months one day?)
[QUOTE]
it doesn’t really go into detail as to HOW they die, just that they’re killed by Samara … i think maybe, they die of fright (if you see Ringu, the original Japanese version, that’s the impression you’re given as well) and, because Samara’s the murderer, the victims take the same form of decay that Samara’s body is in, only much faster. So basically yes, left-on-the-Body-Farm-for-too-long decay.
[QUOTE=Ruffian]
And…Naomi was spared because she, uh, released Samara’s spirit by discovering her body?
Which leaves the next question of perhaps The Biggest Spoiler…somehow Noah is more closely connected to Samara’s death and that’s why she came after him anyway?
[QUOTE]
no. Naomi was spared because – IMPORTANT – she made a copy of the video. Then, she showed it to her ex husband. She shared Samara’s story, she didn’t let Samara continue to be forgotten. That’s why Noah dies - he doesn’t show anyone else the video, or make a copy to spread the word about what happened to Samara.
which is why, at the end of the film, Naomi is on the phone with her father and asks him if he would do her a favor. She makes a copy of the tape and thus alludes to the idea that her son will show the video to his grandfather in order to save his own life. (actually, now i’m starting to doubt that the grandfather is involved in this plot, i think she just makes a copy for her son to show someone…i could be confusing this with Ringu)
slight cliffhanger at the end in the sense of “what will become of them?” but that’s about all.
as for that, listen to the music. my parents noticed that when i was as young as 5, i would leave the room before a scary part happened in a movie . . . for some reason, i picked up on the “Doom Music” (as i like to call it) right away. So just listen to the score, it’s usually a foreshadowing to get the adrenaline pumping. I, however, take it as a welcomed warning to avert my eyes (and occasionally plug my ears).
I must respectfully disagree. Ringu seemed much clearer to me in its details (for example, the whole tape-copying thing).
Ruffian, you might be less bothered by the Japanese version-- the emphasis there seemed to be more on backstory and less on shock value. Though for my money, the Japanese Samara has it all over that little neo Goth kewpie doll from the American film. In Ringu, when she crawls out of the TV and shows a glimpse of her face, I almost had to break out a new box of Oops, I Crapped My Pants.
(BTW, can someone tell me if the Japanese sequel(s) are worth seeking out?)
You could be right about the explanation, I was watching the Japanese version without subtitles, so I may have missed them. When I asked my wife afterwards about it, she said she didn’t know, so I assumed it wasn’t mentioned.
Oh, and I don’t know if I’d bother with the sequels and prequel. Rasen is done as a sci-fi film rather than a horror film (and the explanation of Sadako/Samara’s motives get pretty weird), while Ringu 2 and Ringu 0: Birthday just don’t have the tension that made the original so enjoyable, in my opinion.
My wife told me “Nicholas (her son) watched this movie and thought it was the scariest thing he’d ever seen.” So, I watched it expecting to be terrified.
Conclusion: Nicholas would be afraid of his shadow and has terrible taste in movies.
For you, I’d recommend sticking with the American film. They both work really well on building up the tension, but the big money shot is the end, where Samara (or Sadako in Ring) comes out of the television, and the American version did a great job of making this not very scary. They made her wabble and fade like a televised image, I found the jump to be a start, but not really frightening, and she just didn’t seem all that threatening. Plus, there’s a cut in the sequence that helps break the tension. The Japanese Sadako is a hell of a lot more menacing (her body movements were just frigging freaky), there’s no cut, so the scene lasts longer and is more drawn out making you inch even farther on your seat, and it’s just pulled off a lot better in my opinion. The Japanese version is a lot less gorey (no horse scene, and the people aren’t rotting corpses, just people who died of fright), and there are a lot less little shock moments. But, again, it’s the big payoff scene that really does it, and I find the American version a lot less frightening, so you should be able to handle that better.
(all that being said, I had seen Ring a few times before seeing The Ring and still found myself unnerved for a good couple of nights, so it’s still scary ass hell)
As for the sequels…Ring 2 wasn’t soooo bad, but wasn’t really that great. I’d give it a look simply because it gives a good continuation of the story and you get to see a few really creepy moments (one of which was hinted at in the American version in the mental ward). Still, the ending to it is rather dumb. Ring 0 is a lot different. It’s Sadako’s story, so it’s not really as creepy as one might think it should be. The ending is pretty creepy, though, but overall, it’s kinda slow and uninteresting until the end. If you’re a big fan, check them out and you should be able to enjoy them for what they are. If not, you can do without.
Pretty well summarized, so I’ll just throw in an addition $.02:
I totally missed the connection between the ring image, and the lid being placed over the well. Ewwww…
My overall impression of the movie was that it was creepy; and the video contained some really disturbing images—but nowhere near “scariest movie ever” status.
I thought the character of the little boy was superfluous. Sure, he seems to be channeling Samara – but that’s not a major plot driver. I think his mother (Naomi Watts) thought he was superfluous, too – she seems to go long stretches without interacting with him at all, and when she does, she treats him more like a distant cousin than her son. She even makes him walk to school in the rain.
(Actually, my first impression was that Naomi Watts was way too young to play the part of the mother of an 8-year-old (or so). I was stunned to read that she’s 35.)
I really liked the fake-out ending. You’re being set up to think that it’s a ghost story cliche: find the body, learn the story and the ghost will be happy and go away. Nuh-uh.
One plot twist too many. It ruined the movie completely. It went from being an interesting horror-murder mystery to being another dumb-ass slasher flick with an “undefeatable” foe. Think of her as Freddie without the quips.
So 3/4 of the movie is good, 1/4 of the movie is drek.
I caught part of this on HBO the other night, and was not all that impressed. I watched until Naomi Watts watched the video for the first time. I remember thinking, “That’s it? Everyone dies from watching a TOOL video?”
However, with all of the positive reviews on here, I will have to give it another shot!
This seemed pretty arbitrary, and violates the Rule of Threes, as elucidated by the source of all forensic information: CSI– Three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, three weeks without food.
Of course, if you’re treading water, you might die of exposure and/or exhaustion, not starvation.
Well, you may die in three days without water, but…I’d like to think that even as young as she was, Samara would have been able to find enough water to drink while stuck in a well!
Eh, the seven days thing was just a thing. “One week” was how the Japanese version did it (you never heard Sadako’s voice, just some odd static that the character apparently managed to get the message threw…which I liked a lot better, personally). Also, one of the stupid things from the sequel was that apparently, Sadako didn’t die until about three years prior to all the events happening. Of course, technically, she died multiple times according to Ring 0, so who really knows?
How close was Ringu to the book? I tried to read it, but found it incredibly dull and not nearly as scary as the movie-too much explanation as to Sadako and she didn’t seem that scary, really. Actually, the cuteness of Samara made her scarier, in my opinion.
Also, did anyone else find Aidan at least as creepy as Samara?
Ruffian, I may have you beat for wimpiness. This film has fascinated me, too, which is why I read this thread. The thing is, I was dancing on the edge of nightmares this morning from what I’ve read about the movie, without even seeing it! :rolleyes:
There was one thing in particular which bothered me. I’ve read here that the “Ring” in question was the ring of light around the lid of the well as Sadako/Samara’s mother put it in place. This leads me to believe she was concious at the time. Wouldn’t her mother have noticed that small detail? Or, is that the kind of question you should never ask about a horror movie, along the line of "Why did the girl run off to the dark, lonely woods instead of to the brightly lit, busy shopping center?
Her mother suffocated her, and left her for dead. As tends to happen, sometimes people die with their eyes open, so although Samara was still roughly councious, she was probably too shocked/stunned/hurt (physically and emotionally) to move or speak, and thus lay there in the water. From the parents’ perspective, a still lying girl around who’s face you’ve just wrapped a plastic bag looks pretty dead even if she’s not. And, in the trauma of all that, it’s quite possible that they just didn’t notice she was still alive, even if she did move slightly here and there.
What I’m more concerned about is, if the lid sealed it off, how was light able to create a ring around it? Now THAT’S a stupid question to ask and one you just have to get over (in Ring, what you see is the shot of the moon from the perspective of the well…the ring isn’t an actual ring, it’s a symbol for the ongoing curse. But, a lot of symbolism is lost on us Americans, so what can you say? Again, compare the two videos. The Japanese one has a lot of creepy images, only about 1/3 of which are explained…the rest are just images of a tortured soul. Whereas every little bit in the US version’s video is explained outright, with the exception of the maggots/writhing bodies. But I’m sure that will all be taken care of by the sequel).
of all forensic information: CSI– Three minutes without oxygen, three days without water, three weeks without food.