Exactly what I experienced. I really wanted to see a scary movie, and it didn’t happen. Samara was pretty creepy, but that was about it.
Besides, with so many people going to digital, she’ll be out of a job soon. Unless she figures out how to mentally burn her images to DVD or TiVo- I wonder if they make iMovie for ghosts…
I didn’t find it that scary and I was ready to be blown away. Edward Gorey’s cartoons are creepy and all, but animated they aren’t particularly scary.
What I found disturbing was how she just let the assistant/girlfriend go upstairs to see Edward Burns, Jr., dead like that. At least give her the heads up she may not want to go there.
And I’m feeling the backlash of the false happy ending trend. I’m ready for some good old non-sequel-inducing wrap-ups.
SwimmingwithChickens: Silent Hill is a sort of survival horror game that is beyond scary. The first one, though without great graphics by today’s standards, is much scarier than the second, but the second is pretty creepy, too. I’d recommend them both unreservedly.
Play in any order; apart from taking place in a town of the same name there is really nothing linking them together.
istara said spoiler. Sorry 'bout that.
I saw it this afternoon. I liked it a lot, but this is yet another movie people say is terrifying, and I just don’t get it. It was creepy as all hell, but a lot like Session 9 it wasn’t scary except in a psychological way. There’s nothing wrong with that, but I expected to be actually frightened before the scene at the end where she comes out of the TV. Besides that the only things in the movie that made me jump we loud noises, which I always jump at, horror movie or not. It was great at making you think - what was Samara? The fulfillment of a deal with the Devil? Just a strange little kid? Why was she more powerful once she’d been “rescued”? Why did the surge protector not keep the circuit from being completed? Why did Becky have any idea what was going on when she hadn’t seen the tape? Had Samara stuck around Katie’s house long enough to tell her? And so on have been my thoughts about it so far- but I’m somewhat disappointed that it was not, as promised by many, “the scariest movie ever.” It’s not even as scary as Stephen King’s muddled mini-series Rose Red. Oh well, The Ring was worth seeing anyway.
I’m a bit worried about Kingdom Hospital now, though, since people who have claimed that The Ring was terrifying tend to pair The Kindom with it. Maybe I’ll find that re-make scary, but I’m beginning to doubt it…
Personally, I didn’t find the part about her coming out of the TV to be very frightening - it was almost expected, and it was almost an Evil Dead kind of thing, too.
I totally expected it, too, dantheman. But what got me was that out of the TV she was still TV-like, and she could almost teleport (more like watching a video on fast-forward ;)). :shudder:
I think someone like John Carpenter could have made the movie better. He has a strong sense of pacing, and pacing makes the non-slasher, no-nudity thriller.
I meant sequel, not spoiler, in my last post. Bleh.
I thought the original did the coming-out-of-the-TV scene better. The room was very dark, it was night time, and the angle was different. You didn’t see her come out of the TV straight on, but at about a 45º angle. It made for a creepier effect, IMO.
AudreyK and I had this discussion earlier today (after she posted), but my recollection of the “out of the TV” scene from the original did have Sadako/Samara coming straight towards the camera, making it look like (context and all, you know) like she could have kept coming straight out of your TV, which helped make it scary as all hell.
It also helped that it didn’t cut to a fucking car chase in the middle of it. :rolleyes:
We also discussed who could have done the movie better. Although Audrey hasn’t seen Evil Dead (though we will tomorrow night), we both agreed that if Sam Raimi had made it, we would have pissed ourselves. (Think more of The Gift and less of Spider-Man.)
Plenty of homages (which, as we all know, is French for “rip off”) in this one:
-Towards the end, the shot of the shower drain is an homage to Psycho (as well as a ring)
-The mother discovering the kid sitting staring at the static inches away from the TV is from Poltergeist.
-The aerial shots of the car heading down the mountain road to the inn are reminiscent of the opening of The Shining.
-(My favorite.) There’s the scene where the main character is standing on her balcony, watching people in the next building watch television. The last person she looks at is a guy in a wheelchair with his leg in a cast watching a car race. This is a reference to Rear Window. (In that movie, Jimmy Stewart is a photographer who breaks his leg photographing a car race, and spends the rest of the movie in a wheelchair looking out the window at other apartments.)
I caught most of those references and enjoyed them. I think I can answer one question that has been raised – why does Anna dress like the 1800s? I think she’s wear formal riding clothes.
I was bothered by the location of the well. When Samara is standing before it and her mother remarks on how beautiful it is, we see horses walking around. This suggested to me that the were still on the farm on the island. But it had been established the farm was a long ferry ride away. Why throw horse in to confuse things. Also that cabin looked a lot older than 20 years, with the moss on the roof and all. And who managed to have a motel/cabin placed built there?
It annoyed me that the father electrocuted himself with a buttload of video equipment. Was this symbolic for him? Seems like tossing in a hair dryer would fry you just as dead.
I was troubled by the lack of explanations as to Samara’s origins. Did the parents go off and make a deal with the devil? How did they come up with her. Luck of the draw? The detailing of the repeated miscarriages suggests there’s more it it than that, but it’s never explained why these people became her parents.
I understood that her getting stowed in the barn was the origin of her continued wakefulness. The horses kept her up at night, so she zapped 'em.
Oh one more thing – how and why did they spring her from the mental hospital in order to waste her? And wouldn’t the doctors be a little interested in the whereabouts of their obviously disturbed little patient?
I like horror movies, but I like them better when they’ve got a closed system they’re operating in. It works better if there’s a reason behind bloody noses.
Well it did take place in Washington. My best friend’s next-door neighbour’s house has a lot of moss on the roof. It happens if things aren’t maintained dilligently.
There wouldn’t have been any symbolism if he had used a hair dryer.
Exactly. It’s supposed to be troubling.
To all of the people who say The Ring isn’t “scary”. Well, there are no homicidal axe-wielding maniacs jumping about. It was “creepy”? Yes, it was. I think it was meant to be a psychological thriller more than a monster movie (counting ghosts as a class of “monster”). So it was meant to be creepy. If people are scared, then so much the better.
And if questions were left unanswered, then that’s okay. It gives people something to think about. I mean, which is better? “The girl showed up at the ranch.”; or “The couple made a pact with the Devil.”? If the latter, then we’ve added something else that needs to be explained: What’s in it for the Devil? Why doesn’t he show up in the film? What was the deal the couple made? If they hade done something like that, you can bet people would be complaining “Oh, that deal-with-the-devil stuff is so lame! Couldn’t they come up with something better than that?” Similar complaints could be made regardless of the girl’s origin, so why not leave it ambiguous?
And FWIW, I liked the false ending. I went to the cinema knowing only that there is a tape that causes people who have seen it to die. I think I saw television trailers maybe three times in the preceeding weeks; so for me, at least, it was not “over-hyped”. When the false ending happened I was thinking, “Oh, of course. They have to do a typical happy ending. Whatever; the rest of the film was creepy enough.” I would have been – not “let down”, but I would not have like the ending as much without the extension.
This is not a “horror movie”. It’s a “ghost story” that I would compare to The Haunting (the real one, and not the crappy re-make) or The Innocents. Creepy, but no maniacs or monsters. And I like it that way.
I think the shower drain shot as an homage to Psycho is a bit of a stretch, but I did like the way the two girls in the opening were wearing school girl uniforms as an homage to the original.
I saw it again last night, and still found it creepy as hell. One of the guys who came with saw it the night before, and the second the film first skitted during the Dreamworks logo, he curled up into his seat and stayed there. I found that hilarious, and a sign that this was a truly well done horror film. I like Johnny L.A.'s description of it not being a horror film but more a ghost story. A lot of the criticism my friends gave the original is that it was too slow, but that’s one of the joys of the film, I found. It builds up to a great moment, and the twist ending is great. Typical belief is that once an angry spirit’s body is found and release, the soul can move on. What was it though that angered Samara so much that even once her story was told, she still couldn’t move on? That’s a great thought, and again, I’d just like to say that this movie was great, especially for an American film.
One thing still has me confused…
After Rachel sees Noah’s body and leaves his apartment, she sees Noah’s girlfriend leaving the building, and hides from her. Did Samara turn into the girlfriend?
No, Rachel was just too frightened, worried about getting the hell out and saving her kid than sitting there trying to explain shit to the assistant and worrying about dealing with cops (at least, that’s the way I viewed the situation).
I saw it tonight. Man, was I creeped out!
It didn’t help things that I had a message on my answering machine when I came back, and I almost never get calls up here!
(Don’t worry. It was just my sister.)
Anyhoop, I thought that the film was quite good. It was the scariest thing I’ve seen in a while. I also found it quite interesting that the film jumped straight into the “body” without credits or anything.
Actually, there was a mass exodus of people from the theater after the “false ending,” so they ended up missing some of the best parts! Always…always stay until the end of the reel, that’s what I always say!
Strangely enough, something that annoyed me about my college life might actually be a benefit today. None of my roomies had the foresight to bring a TV to the dorm! No lying awake at night for me! Buahahaha!
All in all, a bloody good movie.
It was made even better, though, by the previews! The Two Towers and Die Another Day were among the films previewed, as well as a short “Metroid Prime” ad. Life can’t get better! 
Just as a WAG, Anna might have been familiar with that particular well because she’d seen it while riding horses or what have you.
I suspect they would be interested, but I also suspect they would have reacted like the island’s inhabitants and felt relieved she was gone.
i guess there’s some spoilers here, so beware
i didn’t think the movie was that scary or creepy. i was waiting for some big pay-offs but was dissapointed. the suspense was great, but you have to reward/punish the viewers for it. it never felt like a true “psychological thriller” to me, i guess.
i did appreciate the end, though. i thought they were going to pull the ubiquitious “it took all this for me to learn to spend more time with my family” schtick, but they turned it around.
i guess there’s some spoilers here, so beware
i didn’t think the movie was that scary or creepy. i was waiting for some big pay-offs but was dissapointed. the suspense was great, but you have to reward/punish the viewers for it. it never felt like a true “psychological thriller” to me, i guess.
i did appreciate the end, though. i thought they were going to pull the ubiquitious “it took all this for me to learn to spend more time with my family” schtick, but they turned it around.
Audrey, you’re not going crazy. I saw the same thing. Kept me looking for other images from the movie subliminally inserted in the movie. It certainly wasn’t a “cigarette burn”.
Um, “setting her free” didn’t do a thing. The boyfriend still died, remember? I hope you didn’t leave the movie 10 minutes early!