Also, at the end of the movie when the screen went black, somebody who had seen the movie before, had their cell phone start ringing. That got some gasps and some laughs.
Well, for my part, it had its good moments and bad moments. Some of the effects were terrifying, particularly the last sequence where she walks through the TV set. I found it well set up because at various times you see the well, but in one sequence earlier you actually see her arm come up out of it before the tape ends. I was actually expecting the whole crawling out of the TV thing, but they did a good job with the effect. That’ll stay with me a while.
Now, I understand that horror movies are de facto supposed to have shitty acting, but I guess I got spoiled by seeing What Lies Beneath with Ford and Pfiefer. The kid was creepy, but . . . shrug creepy kids are soooo. . . last year 
Not knowing that this was a remake, I’m prepared to be a bit more forgiving, and then go see the original. I did not like that there seemed a bunch of things that were unexplained. like, for instance Where in the hell did this little vindictive psychotic little brat come from? They go on about how her parents came back with her from a vacation, but what did they do? Direct-dial hell and apply as foster parents?
And on the Cheese end:
OK, Mrs. Mom: you’re upset because your daughter’s heart “just stopped?” I’d be a little more concerned as to why my daughter went from “alive” to “7 week old corpse that got dredged up from the bottom of a swamp”. Because clearly there’s something a little more strange about her death than her heart “just stopping”.
I still a bit on the fence on this one. It was good. The video was quite creepy. Hmm, I only have 5 days to go.
Big Spoiler, I think. -----
Anyway, I didn’t understand the ending. Where the reporter and the young boy appear to make another copy of the tape. Whats up with that?
Well, for my part, it had its good moments and bad moments. Some of the effects were terrifying, particularly the last sequence where she walks through the TV set. I found it well set up because while at various times you see the well, in one sequence earlier you actually see her arm come up out of it before the tape ends. I was actually expecting the whole crawling out of the TV thing, but they did do a good job with that special effect. That’ll stay with me a while.
Now, I understand that horror movies are de facto supposed to have shitty acting, but I guess I got spoiled by seeing What Lies Beneath with Ford and Pfiefer. The kid was creepy, but . . . shrug creepy kids are soooo. . . last year
I’m prepared to be a bit more forgiving of the story now that I know this was a remake. I did not like that there seemed a bunch of things that were unexplained, and I assume that the original story took care of the loose ends in this version. For instance Where in the hell did this little vindictive psychotic little brat come from? They go on about how her parents came back with her from a vacation, but where did they find her? Direct-dial hell and apply as foster parents?
And on the cheese end:
OK, Mrs. Mom: you’re upset because your daughter’s heart “just stopped?” I’d be a little more concerned as to why my daughter went from “alive” to “7 week old corpse that got dredged up from the bottom of a swamp”. Because clearly there’s something a little more strange about her death than her heart “just stopping”.
I have to wonder how many people went to see this the first weekend thinking it was the sequel to Fellowship of the Ring.
“Hey… where’s Frodo…?”
That’s pretty much the point of the whole movie! This is the way Samara’s curse spreads…the only way you’re safe is if you make a copy of the tape and show it to someone else. If you don’t, you die, but if you want to live, you have to spread the “good word.” I think it’s also a good little bit about human nature. Rachel doesn’t give a shit who she has to show the video to, so long as she keeps her son safe. She’s gone from trying to help “a poor little girl who just wanted to be heard,” to being willing to kill anyone.
bit of a spoiler for the original version: I liked the end of the original, because instead of just “Who are we going to show it to? What happens to them?” the movie ends with the reporter loading her vcr and the tape in her car, and driving off in the sunset. As she drives away, you here her say “Dad? I need you to watch something. it’s for [son’s name].” The sequel begins with the coroner examining her father’s corpse. What’s that say about human nature.
Am I the only one who thinks this movie is a total piece of crap?
I went to Fangoria’s Weekend of Horrors last summer, and saw the trailers for the movie. I also saw a screening of it last month. At the convention, as a gag, the promoters of the movie left the ‘tape’ in question on the dashboards of all the cars in the parking lot. I picked it up (not knowing what it was at the tiem)when I was leaving for the long drive home, tossed it in a bag and forgot about it. A day after I got back home, I popped the tape in. Halfway through, my face turned white with the horrible realization of what I was watching.
What a mean MEAN prank!
We saw it Monday, and I think we both felt the original was the better.
More differences between the original and remake:
In the original they did a better job of setting up and explaining the ‘evil daughter’ aspect of the story. With the American version, those not familiar with the story would feel that the ‘evil daughter’ part was tacked on to the end. Really, it’s only once the movie continues after Rachel is pulled from the well do you think there’s more to the story than a child abuse tale. The Japanese one hinted more at a supernatural origin of the daughter and better laid the groundwork for her being the true evil behind everything.
Sadako’s (Samara’s) face wasn’t shown at all in the Japanese version, save for a shot of her bulging eyeball. This made her ten times creepier-- you had a dozen horrible ideas of what she looked like under that curtain of stringy hair. On a related note, I thought the girl who played Samara was too cute/pretty; someone more average-looking would have worked better.
The American version raised the possiblity of reconciliation between the ex-spouses, something the Japanese version lacked. (The ex-husband did not have a girlfriend, either.) On general principle, I don’t like that, but in the context of the film, it wasn’t distracting, so it didn’t bother me.
The American version took place in two locations: the island where the lighthouse was, and the mountain cabin where the well was. In the Japanese version, everything happened at the mountain cabin. Where the family lived wasn’t addressed as it was of little importance.
Another difference involving to the locations was that the phone only rang post-video at the cabin; it didn’t ring if you watched the video in your own home. The American version instead implies that it rang wherever you watched the video (remember, Noah watches the video at Rachel’s, but when the phone rings she lets the machine answer it and never listens to the mesage. So you never know for sure if it was a voice whispering “Seven days.”) So in the Japanese version, after the reporter’s and her ex-husband’s phones fail to ring after her son and her ex watch the video in their respective homes, she realizes the cabin was the only place where it rings. Therefore, the cabin’s significant somehow. Having tossed this out in the American version, the burning tree wall etching as well as the tree outside the cabin had to be created in order to get them to return to the cabin.
Both of Sadako’s parents were dead in the Japanese version-- you learn about her past from an innkeeper and an odd guest there. No doctor, nor her Forrest Gump grandson.
There were no horses in the original, and there wasn’t so gosh darn much water. Sheesh. I thought I was watching Dark Water all over again.
The video itself was also different. In the original, the woman did comb her hair in the mirror, but there wasn’t a chair, burning tree, centipede, or ladder. No maggots transforming into writhing human bodies.
There wasn’t a fly in the Japanese version, and for that we were glad. Samara popping out of the TV was the big shock of the ending, and to foreshadow it with the fly was just a poor decision. Also, why on earth did they interrupt Samara crawling out of Noah’s TV with a shot of Rachel driving to see him? Good god, you do not interrupt a moment like that…
There were, of course, things I liked about the American version. Samara was a wuss next to Sadako, but the speed in which she moved and the fact she could teleport was freaking creepy. I like my monsters slow moving, lumbering, clumsy beasts. I do not want them quickly crawling across the floor, or being in one spot one second and then being four feet closer a fraction of a second later.
The horse’s death on the ferry made for a neat scene, too. I was especially amused by Rachel’s attempts to calm the animal down. Despite how big and strong and obviously spooked it was, she was determined to talk it calm… :rolleyes:
Did anyone else notice the nod the director gave to Hitchcock’s Rear Window?
In some ways the movie reminded me of The Changeling.
My memory’s kind of foggy, and I forget what scene it was, but about halfway through the movie there appeared a little golden ring in the middle of the (night) sky. It looked just like the one you see on the title screen in the trailer or movie poster. Anyone else see it?
There was a bit of reconcilliation between the spouses in the Japanese one. If you recall, when she runs to the ex-husband’s place and the cop stops her, she screams “He’s my husband!” No ex was prefaced, and they did hint a bit that things were warming up between them. Not as obvious as the American version made out, but it was still there. I’m glad the US version didn’t take it any farther. And the ex did have a girlfriend…he was having a little thing with his assistant, the girl who was constantly coming over and changing his equations. They made that pretty clear in the sequal as well.
As for the locations, the Japanese one did take place in two locations. The video and well were both at the cabin, but Sadako was raised on a different island where her mother predicted the volcano. This was a very imortant point for the movie, just like the horse ranch was for the American version. They went there to get more answers, found the room with the mirror, and found the old man, or as you call him “the odd guest.” That’s where you find out a lot about Sadako’s mother and her abilities as a child to kill people just by force of will. And it’s where the reporter got the marks on her hands by interracting with her.
Now, it’s been several months since I saw the original, but I recall that it was speculated he was actually Sadako’s father, not the doctor.
Just being a nit-picky mother fucker, that’s all 
Yeah, what’s up with that? 
I assumed the assistant was just being playful. Guess I have to see the sequel now.
Saw it last night. I would call it more disturbing than scary. A few raging plot gaps did distract me from the scariness of it at times, and I kept wanting to whisper “I see dead perople” whenever the little boy was onscreen.
Questions: If the little girl was driving the horses crazy, why did the killings stop when the mother killed herself? (per newsclipping discovered by Rachel).
Why did it matter that they “set her free”? She was perfectly capable of killing people from the cistern, so what difference did it make? (this Great Plotholio rendered the ending totally non-scary for me, BTW)
Where did the tape come from? Obviously VHS was not in use 25 years ago. Did Samara have a different method of killing then?
Why did the teenagers (Becca and her friends) know about the tape if it was only available at cabin 12?
Why did the mother dress like it was freaking 1879, instead of 1978?
For what purpose was Samara stowed in the barn? Why did she claim the horses kept her up, when in reality she never slept? Why, when Rachel said she lived there alone, did Noah say “Not alone.” Did he mean the TV? What the…?
Why was a man who kept no horses repairing fences and keeping a barnful of hay?
Also, You could live a heck of a lot longer than 7 days in a well filled with fresh water. The cover admitted some air (since it admitted some light) so she couldn’t have suffocated.
The most disturbing part for me was seeing the horse go over the ferry. That was just too upsetting.
I got the tape as a promo and I must say me and my BF, knowing nothing of the movie’s publicity, had quite a good laugh at it. If you’ve seen the Documentary, American Movie, we compared it to the dude’s totally lame horror flick, “Coven.”
I wouldn’t say total piece of crap but I didn’t care very much for the film either.
One thing that bothered me was why didn’t 4 teens dying at 10pm on the same night raise any eyebrows. Three of them went to the same HS.
Peoples phone machines didn’t pick up the call they way they should. The phone would ring 5, 6 or 7 times. Most machines pick up after 2 or 4. This little break from the real world kind of kept reminding me that the movie wasn’t real.
If the demon kills you 7 days after watching the tape what would happen if you watched it again? Would you (with five days to live) get the phone call that tells you ‘seven days’ again?
What if you just showed it on broadcast tv? Could she really kill millions simultaneously or could you overtax her? We know she can do four people at three locations but how many could she do?
Why didn’t she let the ex answer the phone to help prove to him the curse? She is trying to convince him the tape is cursed? The not picking up the phone in that bit really bothered me.
If you looked up a well and a round disk was being put over it and a RING OF LIGHT appeared around the stone why didn’t the stone fall down the well? When seen from outside the well the stone is large enough that you would never see the ring.
For me the creepiest thing was the doll in the barn/girls room.
{shudder}
Sequel!
(Actually, they’ll probably save that idea for The Ring VI or so.)
Yes it was, though it was a nascent (and expensive) technology.
Besides which, I got the impression Samara burned those images onto the tape in the same way that she projected her mental images onto film at the asylum. She could’ve created tapes from the well, projecting the images onto any VHS tapes in the cabin above her.
Nah. Hypothermia would get you. Well water is cold.
I guess I don’t really remember the chronology; I don’t know how much time passed between Samara’s getting dumped in the well and Anna’s suicide. Was it more than a week?
If she can imprint her thoughts on media near her, moving her body means she can cause havoc elsewhere. At least, that’s my thought…
Samara is a psychic beacon. She sends thoughts to the minds of those around her. Remember those X-rays from her file? They all had images of the objects from her room (stuff she’d probably be thinking about while in the hospital). Samara didn’t sit down and record a videotape, she burned images from her mind straight to the tape. I bet if someone tried to use 16mm film in cabin 12, they’d find a similar effect.
The tapes were evidently in the “lobby” or main cabin of the inn, and guests could bring them back to their rooms, so it wasn’t just available for cabin 12. Anyway, the VCRs in use at the inn were pretty darn old (didn’t they have push-down levers, like old tape recorders?). I’m sure other tapes had been inadvertantly created at the source over the 20-odd years of the inn’s existence.
Got me there. heh.
She was stuck in the barn because her constant tranmission of thoughts was driving her mother crazy. Of course, out there, she drove the horses crazy. There’s no telling when the “never sleeping” started, so maybe at one time she did sleep. As for Noah’s quote, I dunno, I don’t remember the scene that well.
Maybe he still kept other animals (though it seems strange that we never see them). One of my questions about the movie was about an image on the tape, which appears to be of a goat or some such animal with only three legs disappearing into the barn. Most of the images on the tape are explained or explainable, but that one never is.
Maybe. Then again, she was just a little girl. We know she injured her hands trying to climb out; maybe her injuries were more serious than her lost fingernails. Plus, since she never slept, her 7 days would probably seem more like 14.
Meh, who knows. The movie’s supposed to leave you wondering, I reckon.
Don’t know the answers to all the above questions, but here are some…
In this version, the video came from someone in the cabin. This version claims that the girl in the beginning and her friends tried to record a football game, but instead got these funky images. You find out later that Samara apparently has the ability to burn images into film, so she managed to place the images on the video through this odd ability. Becca and her friends knew about it because they watched the video and stayed at cabin 12. If Becca was the cousin’s friend (I don’t remember either of the girls’ names in the beginning), she probably heard about it from one of the other kids, or someone else. In the original, the urban legend had been around for a while.
Samara was stored in the barn because her presence was making her mother go insane. We don’t know if she suffered from her insomnia before she was put in the barn, so it could be said that that was the start of it. Otherwise, it was just another cryptic message to lead Rachel in the right direction. And I believe Noah did mean the T.V.
The guy kept his farm together because it was what he had…it was his life, it was the way he lived, and some people just can’t let go.
For a little girl with no food, who quite possibly suffered some physical injury in the well drop, not to mention being stunned, shaken, and weakened by having a bag wrapped over her head, I think 7 days is a pretty long enough period of time to survive. Of course, according to the Japanese sequal, she lived for several years, but that’s niether here nor there.
Sure, people may have thought there was a coincidence between the kids all dying at the same time, but none of the deaths seemed related, and unless you’re looking for the connection, it’s just an odd coincidence.
Not all answering machines pick up after 2-4 rings. Some do take longer.
Seeing as how Rachel and Noah both watched the tape repeatedly, it’s pretty safe to say that the seven days are from the initial viewing.
What would happen if you showed Samara the tape?
Hmmmm…
I think when she said the horses kept her from sleeping she was referring to the horses on her music box- they scared her. Notice the images she produced on the film at the hospital- those seem to have been her “nightmares” in a way, and at least one of them was a distorted skeletal version of the horses on her music box.