This review is a two part affair covering both the Japanese and American versions of The Ring. The first section is about my thoughts and impressions of the Japanese movie. Only after I finish writing that will I go out and see the American remake and relay what I thought about it. Can I separate these two movies enough to view them as independent stories? Will I run out of things to say after only talking about one of the films? Will this whole thing blow up in my face? Ooh, the tension mounts!

Ring -or Ringu for those of you who feel the need to pronounce everything with such a thick put-on Japanese accent that you tack a vowel onto the end of everything- has an appealingly simple premise: If you watch a cursed videotape you will die a week later. It's a variation on any number of urban legends, ghost stories, or other tales that are passed in conversation from one slumber party to another. Updating the story from chanting a name three times in order to see a girl's face in the mirror to a modern day convenience like a video cassette adds an unintentional, illicit thrill to those of us who live in countries where Ring has not been officially released. The only way I could find and watch a copy of the Ring was to go through a dealer that deals in the grey market world of "fan-subbed" movies. In order to get the movie I had to go to a web site of a group that refused to divulge much in the way of personal information about themselves or their method of acquiring the movies they possessed, request a print catalog in order to find out what movies they were willing to offer to me, go back on-line to make my purchase, and then finally have an unassuming box of videos mysteriously arrive in my mail a few days later. Since I had to go through such a strange string of events in order to get the tape it's not that big a leap to imagine that the tape could kill me dead as well.

During the course of doing a television report about the "friend of a friend" stories about the cursed video that have been circulating among school girls, Reiko Asakawa [Nanako Matsushima] finds herself getting too involved in the case and soon finds herself under the spell of the video's curse as well. In order to save herself and her somewhat annoying son Yoichi [Rikiya Otaka] she enlists the help of her ex-husband Ryuji Takayama [Hiroyuki Sanada] to help her solve the mystery of where the video came from and, hopefully, find a way to lift the curse.

Credit must be given to director Hideo Nakata and especially to composer Kenji Kawai for their restraint. Instead of using erratic camera movements and jittery editing to suggest terror, Nakata goes for sustained, simple shots that always feel like there is something lurking just outside of the field of vision. Kawai's score isn't afraid to use long stretches of silence so when the discordant music swings in it hits like a gong. All of this goes toward making the Ring a movie where anticipation is the driving force behind the movie's atmosphere. When a still shot of a video cassette sitting on a shelf makes the viewer feel like they are looking at something plumbed from the depths of Hell you know the movie has succeeded in setting the mood it wants.

The sense of restraint also carries over into how the movie approaches it's story and various horror movie conventions. When Reiko and Ryuji team up to solve the mystery of the video it's almost expected that they would attempt some sort of reconciliation. Instead the two of them, while still obviously caring for one another, are more concerned with solving the very dangerous problem they're facing and actually seemed to have moved on with their lives. Besides side-stepping the potential romantic angle Ring also avoids the usual roles that women have in horror films. A certain breed horror films out there seem to have, well, issues with women, with the definition of a "strong female character" being a girl who can scream and run really well. I suspect it was by accident more than anything but Ring is one of the most feminine horror films I've seen in some time. By that I don't mean that it's designed to appeal to a female audience but because it avoids a lot of standard modern horror conventions that are aimed at drawing in the young male demographic -such as buckets of blood or randomly naked women- it can draw an audience that would normally not be interested in the window trappings that come with the genre. In another odd twist all the main characters are female or are there to give dimension to the female characters. For starters all the students who discuss the video are female. I have no idea if this says something about the social structure of Japanese schools or that the director didn't feel like having a bunch of dopey guys hanging around the set but it sets the mood for the rest of the picture, especially when it comes to the main characters. When adapting the original Ring novel to the big screen the lead character had it's gender switched, creating the character of Reiko. Not only does this make a greater complexity in her relationship with Ryuji [who was originally just an old college buddy] but it creates a family unit that parallels the lost family that led to the curse. Even the monster in the movie, Sadako Yamamura [Rie Inou], is female.

A word or two about Sadako. There's a number of memorable monsters from horror movies [their victims are usually never as colorful] and Sadako ranks up there with the best of them. Not only does she have a wonderfully simple design she has an introduction worthy of Orson Welles in The Third Man. Throughout the movie the characters discuss and build up Sadako to be a nearly mythic character so when she finally makes her entrance it's a show-stopper of an event. For a character with so little screen time she still manages to get the whole movie revolving around her.

While the Ring has it's share of problems -there are some difficulties with the pacing and at times Ryuji's telepathic abilities felt more like a way to have the characters discuss the plot than anything- it's still a movie that takes it's subject matter seriously and delivers exactly what it set out to do. After I first watched the movie I thought it was nice enough but when, a few days later, I still couldn't get the shambling image of Sadako out of my head I realized that the Ring was, in fact, pretty darn good.

And now... *waits for drum roll* on to part two!

The story of the Ring went through endless changes even before coming to America. From books to television shows, movies and more, the story of Sadako has gone through a huge number of variations. Like the urban legends that form part of the story's underpinnings, a story gets changed every time it's re-told. This multi-faceted approach can be good. Each production can bring it's own original voice and point of view to the story. Sort of like how there's no one "true" version of a play, each story adds to the viewer's appreciation of the story. More than one version also has it's pitfalls since a viewer will often compare the differing versions, often unfavorably, against whatever production of the story they happen to prefer. When you mix a remake done by an American studio into the mix then you really have a recipe for trouble.

Just to lay my cards out on the table, I liked the 1998 Japanese movie version of the Ring and base my comparisons of the other versions off it. From what I've read describing the original novel it sounds like the creators of the movie took some large liberties with the story, all of which were, in my mind, for the better. Now I have to discuss the American remake of an adaptation of... yeesh, this is getting complicated. I'm also not sure how to easily tell the films apart. Should I start calling the Japanese film Ringu and the American version The Ring? Should I refer to one as the Ring and the other as Crap? Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself.

This time out the lead is Rachel Keller [Naomi Watts] a hard-assed reporter who's also a bit of an absent mother from her jug-eared, precocious son Aiden [David Dorfman]. When investigating the death of her niece Katie [Amber Tamblyn] she comes across the story of a video tape that will kill anyone who watches it a week later. In order to help solve the mystery of the tape she enlists the help of Noah [Martin Henderson] a audio-video sort of guy and her estranged boyfriend. As it stands I really have nothing overly bad to say about the lead actors other than that Aiden kid got on my nerves but with the lines he was stuck saying it's not surprising he didn't come off all that well.

If there's anyone who is to blame for the difficulties I felt while watching The Ring I would have to lay the blame on the doors of screenwriter Ehren Kruger and director Gore Verbinski. In writing the US adaptation Kruger unwisely melded the original screenplay with elements of the pseudo scientific clap-trap that unhinged Ring 2 as well as some other stuff that seems to come out of nowhere in particular. Abandoning the almost minimalist story of the original screenplay, Kruger tries to punch up -or at least endlessly explain- the symbolism and add on some of his own -such as a potentially interesting thing with horses that never goes anywhere. While the original Ring suffered from some plot holes you didn't really mind them since the whole of the movie was entertaining. The US Ring has it's share of dropped plot lines as well but instead being lost due to the urge to keep the suspense moving I was left with the feeling that someone, somewhere dropped the ball. The tape's back story never fully gels, making it feel as if a section of the story wasn't written, never filmed or was left on the editing room floor. For instance, what was up with all neat old electronic equipment that Richard Morgan [Brian Cox] had around the house? I'd love to have that junk! I don't know what I'd do with it, but it would be great to have. Most troubling, however, is that while it's mentioned that Samara Morgan [Daveigh Chase, looking like a cross between Sadako and Wednesday Addams] wasn't well liked it's never made clear just what she did to earn the dislike of the town. [A quick word about Daveigh Chase. While she's still obviously quite young -yeah, I'm too lazy to look up her actual age- she's already managed to be in Donnie Darko, Lilo & Stitch, the US dub of Spirited Away and now the remake of the Ring. That girl has an amazing agent!] This is nitpicking, but thanks to what looks to be a post-filming decision the victims of the curse now no longer frozen with a scream on their face but end up looking quite moldy as well. In the movie the characters discuss the deaths as if the victims had inexplicably died without a mark while the corpses look like cottage cheese that was left in the refrigerator too long. It's a small problem with the script but it amused me.

The other parnter in crime is director Gore Verbinski. Best known as the creator of the Budweiser frogs he's now taken whatever he learned from working on Mousehunt and tossed it at The Ring. Obviously wanting to put his own stamp on the remake he foregoes the still scenes and silence of the original with a constantly moving camera and the boom boom akalaka boom soundtrack by Hans Zimmer letting us know exactly what we are supposed to feel with any particular scene. Is this because Verbinski thinks this is a good idea or is there some sort of formula used by Dreamworks for their films? By the time the movie is over Verbinski's obsession with making music video level scares has left him so shell-shocked that when the "Big Scene" hits he totally flubs it. Way to go Verbinski.

In a way I feel like I'm selling The Ring short. Yes, it has faults but what story doesn't? I would love to have someone else see the movie to act as a barometer but if I'm going to make someone see one of the Ring movies I would opt for the Japanese one. While The Ring does bring a few interesting ideas to the table it ends up feeling like it could have been done, or in this case re-done, much better. Like a video tape that's been copied one too many times, The Ring feels like it's lost that certain something that made it worth copying in the first place.

Questions, comments, and weird videos can be sent to gleep9@hotmail.com. Now that you have read this article you have seven days to live. Make the most of it by heading back to either the Third Movie or Main page.