The Ring-OMG (spoilers)

Cafe Society
1

Yesterday evening, El Elvis Rojo and I took in a sneak preview of The Ring. Last night, I read until two, considered sleeping on the couch, contemplated staying up all night, and finally resorted to a nightcap in the hopes of disturbing my sleep patterns to avoid REM sleep. The movie was just that goddamned scary.

The Ring, a remake of a Japanese movie of the same name, concerns a videotape that kills its viewers seven days after they watch the tape. Immediately after watching the tape, viewers’ phones ring, and a voice says “Seven days.”

I won’t give away major plot points, but the movie’s stroke of genius-brilliant, evil, why-in-the-name-of-all-that’s-#$%ing-holy-did-I-put-myself-through-this? genius-is that it makes TVs and phones the instruments of doom. Haunted houses, abandoned mental hospitals, and deserted roads with psycho killers on the loose are all easily avoided, but I’ve got a TV right beside my bed. If I’d gone to sleep on the couch, there would be a TV right in front of me. Rooms without TVs might have been safe, if El Elvis Rojo hadn’t seen the original and thus been unable to explain that it wasn’t just TVs there, but any reflective surface. This ruined the bathroom for me as well.

The Ring is one of the best horror movies I’ve seen, and the only one to keep me awake since I saw Return of the Living Dead when I was five. The movie’s constant rain and deep grey color scheme have put my desire to visit Seattle on a temporary hold. Despite the seven-day formula, there isn’t a moment in the movie where it doesn’t seem like something horrible is just around the corner.

The movie uses the happy ending cliche to great effect. The main character, a reporter, solves the mystery of the evil force, and goes home to her son, who has been receiving psychic messages from the evil. He wakes up with her lying next to him. “It’s okay, baby” she tells him. “We helped [it].”
He looks at her wide-eyed and says “You weren’t supposed to help [it].”

2

I believe this movie comes out to the regular release at the theatre on Friday- I’ll be there for the first showing.

Although, damned if it doesn’t sound disturbingly similar to the plot of Fear Dot Com. That movie bit massively, though.

3

The Japanese original was the first movie to actually scare me in a good, long time, and I watch horror films on a regular basis. I may have to give this new version a look when it comes out here.

Incidentally, if you decide to view the Japanese version, look for the 1998 one starring Nanako Matsushima and Miki Nakatani. There was another adaptation of the book done back in 1995, titled Ring: Kanzen-ban, but it’s mostly just an excuse for softcore porn actress Ayane Miura (as the killer spirit Sadako) to walk around naked a lot. Not that that’s necessarily a bad thing.

4

Don’t worry, Fionn, there’s really nothing to be scared of. Well, at least not for another five days :slight_smile:

Sublight, I’d seen the Japanese version twice before watching the American adaptation, and trust me, it’s a pretty good one, and left me feeling creeped out and on edge nonetheless. Of course, you’ll be sitting there comparing the two, but if you can cut that down to a minimum, I’m sure you’ll be pretty well pleased.

I highly recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys horror movies, and even to those who don’t.

5

Just got back from seeing this movie.

That is a seriously scary flick, and I don’t scare easy when watching a movie.

Good God.

6

Fionn, have to say that I would never have bothered to see the american remake had it not been for the last line of your spoiler. Thanks!
Damn. What a fine final line.

7

That is one seriously creepy movie. I actually screamed right in the theater when

she stepped out of the TV.

I was so glad that I don’t have a TV set. I know I’d have put it out in the hall and locked the door so I could get some sleep.

LOVED IT! :smiley: I have got to see the original version.

I think another thing that makes this flick so horribly scary is that when it comes time to reveal the killer, the killer is a person who can control everything around [it], can’t be bound by any natural or supernatural means, and cannot be stopped. [It]'ll haunt me for a long time, I know.

8

I caught the Friday matinee. Sadly, for some reason the first-run theaters in my town (both of which are owned by Cinemark) didn’t carry it; it opened at the dollar theater.

DAMN that was good. I haven’t seen a horror movie that good in a long time. I don’t cover my eyes, but there are times when I “change my focus” while looking at the screen, when I expect something bad is coming. I did that a couple times. heh.

Anyone else think it was funky that there were no opening credits, not even a title? Just the Dreamworks logo (with the ring ghosting in over the “D” for a second) and then right to it.

9

There’s a reason for that… as I heard it told, Fear Dot Com was an idea that also germinated from the Japanese original, but was butchered by American sensibilites. The Dreamworks version of The Ring is meant to be more faithful… and has pretty obviously succeeded in that. I haven’t heard from anyone who liked fear dot compost, whereas everyone says The Ring is effective and excellent. Hell, the last really good, creepy horror movie I know of was Jacob’s Ladder.

I don’t know if I can convince my wife to see this one. She’s not into horror movies as I am. She groans whenever I rent a scary movie. And she thinks the ads look “cheesy.” I, on the other hand, find them chilling… the part in the ads that shows a woman screaming but the only audio is a flat beeeeeeeeep. Brrr.

I may just have to see this one alone. Oh, crap.

10

We rented the original tonight and watched it a few hours ago. To be honest, it wasn’t as oh-my-god scary as I’d thought it’d be. Keeping with the Japanese horror theme, Uzumaki and Dark Water were worse (or better, depending on how you look at it). But it was a scary movie.

Based on the reviews here, I’m looking forward to seeing the American remake. Apparently there are differences between the two, so I’m curious as to what they are.

11

Yeah, I have to agree with Daowajan. In that spoiler you mention, that was one scary ass moment. The whole friggin theater screamed.

12

i just say it last night…ive never coverd my eyes before, but man oh man, the expressions of the people who were killed is what really got me.
any way, to people who have seen the american and original, what were the differences in the two?

13

Okay, now I really really want to see this. And I am NOT a movie person.

I do, however, LOVE a good creepy story, but shy away from most horror movies because they’re usually of the slasher variety.

I like creepy, chilling things, like The Sixth Sense, or The Blair Witch Project.

14

Horror movies, usually, don’t scare me. The Sixth Sense made me mildly uncomfortable. The Blair Witch Project was kinda spooky. And The Ring…

…I’m never renting a video again. Ever.

For the last hour, I was clutching the girl beside me’s hand like an Enron executive with a stress ball. My legs are still like Jello. When I got home, first thing I did was turn on the lights. All of them.

Oh, and Guin:

I’d bring in a camera, and make a bootleg of it. Just in case.

15

My roommate saw it a couple of days ago, and claimed she wasn’t scared at all, chiefly because she watched it in a theater with some jackasses at the back making noise.

Meanwhile, the [24] TV ad made me jump for days, because of the ringing phone it features, and I slept with the TV on for a couple of nights. I wanted some source of light in the room, and that way there couldn’t be a freaky moment when the TV turned itself on.

16

Spoilers

Well, in the original Japanese, the corpses weren’t all grotesquely bloody and gray and shit. They were simply contorted in death throws of horror, which personally, I liked a little better. Also, in teh Japanese version, the ex-husband was a math professor of sorts, not a photographer, and he had psychic abilities, which is where the son got them from as well. nothing hokey, but it helped explain a few things. No horses in the Japanese one either…the girls’ parents were a scientist and a telepathic woman who could predict the future. It was speculated that the daughter was conceived by some sort of water ogre, or at least, that’s what the small town claimed to explain her creepiness. And it was her father that killed her, not the mother…the mother was already dead by then. Also, the reporter was already working on the story of the mysterious tape before her cousin died from it. The cousin’s boyfriend didn’t jump off of a building, he crashed his motorcycle, and the other couple were found in their car…they’d been fooling around, but something happened and scared them both to death.
The big difference is that the Japanese movie is a lot slower paced an builds up the suspence a lot more, which I personally liked a lot. I’m still not sure which one I would say is better, because they’re both great films and I really enjoyed the remake. But I highly suggest someone se the original as well if you get the opportunity.

17

Just got back from seeing it with my wife. She is ordinarily easily creeped out, and this one did scare her a bit, but because of the jerks that the theater was filled with, I couldn’t stay involved in the movie. Every time there was one of those “jump” moments, people in the theater would scream, and then there would be some giggling and a bunch of talk all over the theater for the next minute or so. The first time this happened (“I saw her face”) I could hear the couple behind me:

Him (laughing): You’re going to leave a bruise on my arm!
She says something back, he whispers something to her and she laughs again. This goes on for the better part of a minute.

We moved to another spot in the theater, where the same thing was happening. Then a third spot. It seems like every damn teenage boy in the place had to prove to his girlfriend that he wasn’t scared by making fun of her and making jokes about the movie.

Then there was a girl who, on several occasions, shouted advice at the screen (they can’t hear you, Miss Clueless), each time getting a shouted response from someone else.

I left and complained to a theater employee, who shrugged and told me every showing has been like this, and what are we supposed to do, kick everyone out? After the movie (as obnoxious as the other patrons’ behavior was, I still wanted to see the movie I’d paid for) I asked to see the manager, who told me that every showing had been the same, that I was the one being unreasonable, and that it must not have bothered me very much if I went back into the theater instead of asking to see him right away. I told him that my wife and I, who see around 40-50 movies a year at the theater, would be patronizing his competitor a few miles down the road from now on for new movies (about half our theater going is at the art house/revival theater), and he didn’t seem the least bit bothered.

Despite these problems, I found the movie relatively effective, and I can tell that it would have been a truly frightening experience seen with a crowd that had elementary manners. Or a nearly empty theater; I knew we should have waited until Tuesday afternoon matinee as usual.

Last week we saw a horror movie (Red Dragon) in a packed theater and the whole crowd was reasonably behaved (ie, quiet) the whole movie. This was, of course at the other theater I mentioned.

18

Well, only read this after you’ve seen it, Avalonian:

I don’t know if EVERYONE says it’s effective and excellent; I was kind of disappointed. They do a fantastic job of building up suspense; for the first 15 minutes or so my heart was pounding. But I think they did a pretty weak job of keeping the tension up – after the third or fourth time I got myself all worked up that I was going to see something absolutely terrifying, and then got no payoff (either nothing happened, or it was a fairly cheesy makeup effect), I stopped getting nervous. I’m all for suspense instead of gore, and I’m glad they never went for the easy out and left much implied, but I think that there was a lot of really horrifying material in there that could’ve been used to better effect. All the pacing, esp. with the trick happy ending, was off; so many times it just seemed like a plucky-young-reporter-solving-a-spooky-mystery story.

And I couldn’t empathize with any of the characters, either. I keep wondering why they didn’t spill the beans about the little girl in the first place, so you’re spending the whole movie feeling how horrible it must have been for her, and THEN you get all the details of the story.

Very good closing line, though.

And the reason I put my whole pissy, wet blanket review in a spoiler tag was because I think the movie depends on your going in thinking it’s going to be pants-wettingly terrifying.

19

hasn’t seen the movie yet and flicks past the other posts

Oh DEAR GOD NOOOO! I have a morbid fear of anything [ghosts, spirits, evil bad things] making themselves present through TVs, phones or radios.

Now I’m all scared just from reading the OP.

20

Also, did anyone else notice that while the Dreamworks logo is showing at the beginning, the screen flickers twice, like a TV on the fritz. The people next to me in the theatre were looking back at the projectionist booth thinking that there might be a malfunction or something.