The Ring (2002) Review
When Koji Suzuki wrote his book Ring back in the Nineties I doubt he could have envisaged the beast his story would unleash. In much the same way that the cursed videotape has to be copied for the curse to be transferred it appears also that the film has to be remade too. The original movie, directed by Hideo Nakata, became widely acclaimed as a classic and was recently voted as one of the top five scariest movies of all time. It was inevitable that Hollywood would come a calling and the resulting remake, 2002’s The Ring was a worldwide smash and was passable, despite being scripted by Ehren Kruger and being tailored for the PG-13 crowd.
It went on to be a huge success, grossing an estimated $228million at the world box office, a nice return from a $45million budget. Later on DVD in the US it went on to shift more than two million copies within its first twenty four hours of release. Dreamworks had some nifty marketing gimmicks for the movie, including showing the cursed video clip as the commercial, never mentioning the movie. They also put copies of the same video on seats at selected cinemas across the US and Canada during its first week of release as freebies.
For Naomi Watts, who got the part after Jennifer Connelly (who later starred in Nakata’s remake of his own Dark Water in 2005 again based on source material by Koji Suzuki), Gwyneth Paltrow and Kate Beckinsale passed on it, it was the beginning of her ascent up the Hollywood A-list cumulating with the role of Ann Darrow in Peter Jackson’s King Kong (2005).
Director Gore Verbinski manages to pay tribute to the spooky original and open out the story without losing the scares and distilling the atmosphere of lingering dread. Where he doesn’t succeed though, at least for me, is in making clear that for the viewer to survive they have to copy the tape and pass it on hence passing on the virus/curse. He also kind of fudges the pivotal scare of Samara popping out the TV with a special effect sequence that is not a patch on the scene in the 1998 original. However the underlying themes of child abuse and his version of the cursed video tape all help crank up the freaky stuff, as well as an incident involving a horse on a ferry.
Rachel is a reporter bringing up her young son Noah on her own. Attending a family funeral she learns that her niece Katie may have passed away as a result of watching a video tape. Unlike most people that would think the whole conversation stupid her journalistic instincts fire up when she learns that others that had viewed the tape with her niece have also died seven days after the event. Her investigation takes her to the fateful room where it all started at the Shelter Mountain Inn.
In handling the material Verbinski has certainly done his homework, rather than just tread out a tired and uninspired remake. I like the fact that the videotape with the word ‘copy’ on it is the same used in the Japanese original. Apparently, throughout the film, subliminal frames from the cursed video tape have been inserted. So subliminal in fact that I don’t recall seeing any, so could be a case of blink and you will definitely miss them.
In toning down the movie to achieve a more audience friendly PG-13 rating in the States, certain scenes obviously ended up cut. However if there was a movie that sounded like it should definitely put out an extended version at some stage it is this one, if only to satisfy my warped and disturbed tastes. Originally Samara’s murder lasted longer and was much more violent. When the plastic bag placed over her head fails to do as anticipated her killer then begins to repeatedly hit her on the head with a large rock, before slamming her head against the side of the well and dumping her in it. A scene was also cut where the cabin manager is found dead in a canoe.
There was also a child murderer played by Chris Cooper that was completely cut from the finished release after test screenings. His scenes were at the beginning and the end of the movie. At the start of the movie, we see Cooper’s character approach Rachel in the hope that she will help clear his name, now that he is a changed person and no longer a threat to society. Rachel doesn’t believe him and refuses his request. At the end of the movie she pays him a visit and leaves him with a copy of the cursed video – nice!
