Ring a Ding Ding

Movies
21

Not having seen the original version, I was completely creeped out by the remake. Very tense, I had a building sense of dread. I fell for the “all’s well that ends well” fake ending, which made the last 10 minutes work really well on me, kind of like the end of Se7en, where I kept thinking, “waitaminute, did what I think just happened happen?”

But the kid could have not waited until the last minute to mention that the girl was not a nice ghost that just wanted to send a message, like in 6th Sense, but an evil ghost that wanted to ram a nightmare down the world’s throat.

That walking out of the TV scene was great on first viewing, really shocking.

But I can see some people just are not scared at all by this movie. Maybe I’m a wimp, or have an overactive imagination.

22

Look, I always though I was the more critical theatre-goer, but I guess lately I’ve learned to just enjoy the flic instead of tear it apart…or maybe my brains just slowing down.

I liked The Ring. I wasn’t terrified by it, but I loved the investigation during the seven days, and the horse on the ferry was also good for some thrills. I also loved the false ending. I think one thing that benefitted my ability to enjoy it was that I knew nothing about it: I hadn’t seen a trailer or review or discussion about it and went to it with nothing more than the willingness to enjoy a creepy story. It’s the same way I watched The 6th Sense and enjoyed that for the same reason- and the fact that 6th was a better film.

I do think the dead people were overdone - that’s what you get for bringing in Rick Baker - although, aside from the “must have been a heart attack” line I just accepted it as the curse of the tape. Though, I think just some undefinable death would have done just fine.

I don’t know… am I getting soft?

  • Jason
23

I wasn’t terrified by it, but I loved the investigation during the seven days, and the horse on the ferry was also good for some thrills.

It’s tough to do a movie about someone doing research, which is essentially what The Ring was. In addition to a mystery, you need a compelling character (cf. Chinatown). Watching Naomi Watts type keywords into Google just wasn’t as compelling as watching her fall down a well and get her clingy sweater all wet.

However, the horse on the ferry scene was good. Great stuff that should have been in a better movie.

I don’t know… am I getting soft?

Eew…

 -Tom
24

Yeah. I had forgotten that scene from the trailer (even though I had spent a good 2 minutes trying to freeze frame on it :D ) when suddenly, just when I thought she was lying dead or comatose miles below the surface…And now for something completely different: wet nipplies! Yay!

25

Eew…

-Tom

Tom, you’re such a… a you-know-what.

26

You should see Mulholland Drive… Naomi Watts does more than just search in Google! heehaw! Lezzbe friends stuff! Good movie. Go watch Godfather someday Tom. It really is good!

etc

27

spoilers of course

I’m gonna disagree that the Japanese version made more sense, I think it was one of those things where the director had TOO MANY ideas and wanted to jam them all in. Plus the ending was LAME. The American version was cleaned up a bit because we don’t have the influence of the book to go on (It was a book and sequals in Japan.)
It was basically a pretty lazy movie, for the most part NO explanation is given for why characters do things.

Lemme just clear up a few more things too: It wasn’t instant decomposure, they looked like they had been soaking in water for many days (swelling, contusions, softening of the tissue.)
Also the third (really the fourth if you count “Spiral,” though the movie had little to do with the others) Japanese “Ring” film (yes "birthday) was NOT an official prequal, there was a small sub-plot jammed in about the girl (who is curiously NOT deformed) and ends with them reshooting “Carrie.”
The second was more a “Hey let’s review the entire first damn movie” thing then throw a dream sequency thing in.
I think the most accurate description of the US version can be found http://www.screamingmonkeylabs.com/thering.html here. It’s mostly stupid, but if you’ve seen the movie it’s worth a look.
Personally it’s a LOT of “waiting for something to come that never comes,” like when you watch a movie and the shot is framed in a way that gives away the fact that something is gonna happen. (Does that make sense?)

28

Tom warned me above to stay away from the remainder of the thread until I’d seen the movie and I wisely followed his advice.

I’d like to add something about the plot holes… I left the film the same as Derek: a little confused about the backstory. I felt like I had missed something. And the more I thought about the backstory, the more confused I became. Why exactly was the girl institutionalized? What happened on the island? Why was she take out of the institution? Why was she put in the barn loft? How the hell did she get that crap on the video?

At first, all these questions bothered me. The director and/or writer(s) was very careful cleaning up other details. Why leave all these huge holes in the dam while they’re plugging up all the little ones?

But then, I realized the backstory was almost haunting me. My imagination fumbled with it like a Rubik’s Cube, trying to get all the sequences to line up and fill in the blanks. The backstory was with me like a dream stays with me when I suddenly wake up: there are holes, but the emotion is what strings the images together. The girl’s backstory almost became like a hazy memory of my own.

All right, enough of that. Does anyone else feel this way or do I need to crank up my meds?

29

I felt exactly that way, but not about the plot holes. I just sort of “oh well’d” them away. But the film did haunt me, for weeks after. In fact, I was probably more scared (for lack of a better word) days later than the night of.

30

The timeline is EXTREMELY fuzzy, but she was put into the institution to study the power she had. (If you watch the video sequence you can see she is plugged into a thing to study her brain waves, EEG I think.) Also this MAY have had something to do with her falling off a horse.

What happened on the island?
Animals started dying and they had bad weather, also there may have been a few “bad” births. This is fuzzy as well.

Why was she taken out of the institution?
shrug

Why was she put in the barn loft?
Her mother was going insane, because the horses were “hearing” the little girls thoughts, the “whispers” her father killed himself over, and killing themselves. Fuzzy as all hell.

How the hell did she get that crap on the video?
Remember the pictures that were in her folder? They were on a special photo-sensitive paper, there are some people that claim psychics can “burn” an image into such paper. She did the same thing to the tape.
Or maybe they cut out a sub-plot about a magical wizard.
Either way I don’t think the movie was the type to think on, more of a “Hey let’s see something with the girls so we can cop a cheap feel while they hug us for safety” type thing.

31

Finally picked up the DVD and saw this after not reading any reviews or threads here. Thought it was pretty good. My only problem is that I imagined it was going to be a bit creepier from all the hype and discussion about it.

Agree with Tom, that it was good for investigative newspaper yarn, but as a horror flick it was not quite “the bomb”.

Agree with Jack et. al. that the plot holes added mystery rather than detracting from the story. Nothing worse than a wrap-up at the end leaving nothing for you to ponder after the viewing. This way, it stays with you and you wonder. I think this type of movie resonates for a longer period of time with me.

Off to find Ringu and the Ring v. Ringu thread.

SPOILER

Oh yeah, Naomi Watts was hot. I wish there had been a few more shirts displaying her “features” before she fell into the well. The wet shirt kinda distracted me from the story. :)

32

The TV scene in Ringu is one of the scariest things I have ever seen, right up there with the subliminal face in The Exorcist.

What subliminal face?

With regards to all the “unanswered questions” this movie has left people with, allow me to throw out some speculation.

First of all, my understanding of the backstory’s chronology is this (and keep in mind, this is going from memory):

SPOILERS GALORE

Little girl is born, when her mother hasn’t been able to have any children with the actual father. Rumors fly that she may have had the child via an affair. (An incubus, perhaps?)

Little girl grows older. Mother begins getting headaches.

Little girl learns to ride a horse. At some point, she falls off a horse. She is now angry at horses. Horses begin to die mysteriously. Mother’s headaches get worse. Mother begins having some severe mental defects spring up. Blames them on the girl.

Forces girl to sleep in a barn. With horses. Girl because psychotically vengeful, and starts exerting her supernatural powers on the island, causing all sorts of devastating (but unspecified) effects.

Girl is sent to be psychoanalyzed, where she proceeds to burn the images onto the X-ray film we see in the film.

The mental hospital, unable to deal with this psycho, gives her back to her mother, who loathes her, and tells her it’s her problem.

Mother takes her out to a farm on the mainland and proceeds to suffocate and drown the girl in the well.

Cabin is built over well, with a VCR player, and the girl’s spirit turns a tape into THE tape.

All manners of horny high school kids over the years visit the cabin, some seeing the tape accidentally, and then dying, and eventually, a Urban Legend (this one being true) about a tape that kills in 7 days is created.

Enter main characters, cue the rest of the movie.

I’m not quite clear on what everyone else seems to be unclear on, and I only saw the movie twice.

Utterly brilliant, as far as I’m concerned, though I haven’t seen Ringu, so I don’t know how much of that brilliance was plagarized. Nonetheless, the camerawork, atmosphere, acting, and dialogue were all top-shelf.

33

Billy Friedkin put in about 4 single-frame subliminal cuts to a ghostly painted-white grimacing face throughout the movie. One of the knocks I’ve seen regarding the “new” version of EXORCIST is that there are more of these scenes added–too many in fact, thus robbing them of their power.

34

Actually, the teenagers that die off at the beginning of the movie are the first to view the tape, at least in this incarnation. They were trying to some sporting event, but watched it later, and it was THE TAPE.

35

Actually, the teenagers that die off at the beginning of the movie are the first to view the tape, at least in this incarnation. They were trying to some sporting event, but watched it later, and it was THE TAPE.[/quote]

Sure, that tape may have recently been “etched” by the dead girl, but surely others had been in the cabin, and had the same experience beforehand. The cabin looked as though it’d been there the better part of a decade.

This is one of those little niggles that makes me think to myself, “Why the fuck does it matter so much?”

Movies have continuity errors, goofs, and plotholes all the time. It’s not whether a movie has them or not, it’s how many are present that count. This movie had relatively few compared to some movies which are considered classics of our time.

36

[quote=“triggercut”]

Billy Friedkin put in about 4 single-frame subliminal cuts to a ghostly painted-white grimacing face throughout the movie. One of the knocks I’ve seen regarding the “new” version of EXORCIST is that there are more of these scenes added–too many in fact, thus robbing them of their power.[/quote]

I don’t remember seeing those. Were they during the “scary” scenes, or during calm moments of the movie?

And hasn’t there been research disproving the efficacy of subliminal messages such as these? I thought all of that was urban legend at this point with no scientific backing.

37

If they were subliminal, you wouldn’t have consciously remembered seeing them ;)

Subliminal messaging doesn’t work, that’s true, but if you actually see a ghostly white face for a split second during a horror movie, I imagine it can startle you a bit.

38

Yes, but that’s just the thing - Something that appears for 1/24th of a second cannot be consciously recognized, therefore it wasn’t seen.

Maybe if they did 3 frames out of 24. Or however many they used at the end of Fight Club with the dirty photo, then yes, that would be geniuinely terror-inspiring.

39

Subliminal techniques affect a person’s mood… usually to unsettle them regardless of the content. It works best in creepy eerie thriller-type movies like The Sixth Sense. I don’t know if Shyamalan has ever used subliminals, but they would work the best for his style.

The idea of using different subliminal messages to invoke different moods is… wrong.