The Eye II (2004)

From http://pad.mymovies.it/filmclub/
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Directors: Danny Pang Phat and Oxide Pang Chun

Screenplay: Lawrence Cheng

Cast: Shu Qi as Joey Cheng; Eugenia Yuan as Yuen Chi-kei; Jesdaporn Pholdee as Sam; Philip Kwok as a Monk

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #114

The Eye II, in vast contrast to its prequel, is just dire. Barring a few plodding moments of melodrama, the original film was a sober, quiet story and was generally compelling. The Eye II in contrast has complete amnesia to about every virtue the previous film had. The premise itself isn't that bad for a film which, frankly, shouldn't have been included in this series and should've been its own film instead with a different title; as the original film followed a blind woman whose life is woven between having eye transplant surgery and her struggle with seeing the dead after this event, here Joey Cheng (Shu Qi) is a woman who after a mock suicide both has to deal with the fact she can now see the dead too and the added complication that she's pregnant, having to go through the entire nine months of maternity whilst dealing with what she can now see, showing in chapters based on the months passing and her body changing due to pregnancy. It offers the Pang Brothers another drama of interest but instead of following the perfectly solid template of the previous film, The Eye II makes considerable changes which causes it to completely tank in execution.

The film is slicker, more elaborate in general style and significantly more gorier, even having CGI effects for the ghosts. It's also more reliant on generic jump scares and loses the melancholic tone of the original work. Damaging it considerably is how the ghosts are no longer treated as individuals of immense sympathy who, despite being frightening and haunting the protagonist of before, are now openly malevolent entities, ones whose behaviour for three-quarters of the film to Joey are completely at odds with the attempt at sympathy  at the end. Their behaviour has not only been aggressively menacing but, through the narrative, they are portrayed as openly causing stillbirths when in the original black death-like figures were merely bystanders who came in to take the souls of those who passed, contradicting the attempts at connecting through the original's spiritual tone with meandering philosophies from a monk Joey sees. The grimly interesting plot idea that eventually appears - that they can be reborn through the livings' pregnancies - becomes less a fascinating metaphor for life cycles, especially as those who can see the dead could come to a burying of any grievances and allow the dead to relive life, but crudely implemented. Any sense of meaning and message that made the original Eye admirable is lost.

It even becomes farcical in how more gruesome and aggressively presented in the shocks it is, where bodies suddenly fall down from the top of the camera frame in one scene with such crunchy detail its closer to a Herschell Gordon Lewis shock than the serious horror its meant to be. Emphasising this is the worse creative decision of the film where, rather than like heroine Mun in the first film who reacts calmly to the hauntings and only starts to act negatively when the pressure of the supernatural beings is too much for her, Joey is a figure whose already prone to childishness and exaggerated actions, faking a suicide knowing how dangerous it is and that she'll be in the hospital getting her stomach pumped, and one whose only reaction to the ghosts is to scream and immediately cause people to suspect she's lost her marbles than be sympathetic to her. Repeated scenes of her reacting violently to ghosts is just boring, the melodrama with her ex-boyfriend close to agony when the film completely stops. Even when it gives up seriousness completely for an absurd elaboration of the ending of Roman Polanski's The Tenant (1976), it cannot save The Eye II from being badly thought out.  

From http://www.horror-extreme.com/Content/
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The Eye (2002)

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Directors: Danny Pang Phat and Oxide Pang Chun

Screenplay: Jojo Hui, Danny Pang Phat and Oxide Pang Chun

Cast: Angelica Lee as Wong Kar Mun; Lawrence Chou as Dr. Wah; Chutcha Rujinanon as Chiu Wai-ling; So Yat-lai as Yingying; Candy Lo as Yee

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #113

It's night and day for me that within a region where spirituality and folklore is still prevalent even in urban areas, the horror films that come from East Asia have a lot more conviction to them. If one has grown up within a culture where the supernatural still has meaning rather than a divide between belief and agnostic/atheist modernism, then horror films which deal with the afterlife and the dead will have a greater emotional meaning even if one still intends to make a popcorn chiller.

The Eye, whilst it begins with the kind pre-film shock teaser you'd expect from an American exploitation horror film, does have a sense of melancholy, and in spite of its flaws has lingered for me like the ghosts the haunt the dank, grey blue and darkly lit environments within the film because of this factor. It's also its own ghost as well to supernatural horror from Hong Kong and Chinese language cinema already, as whilst horror films are still being made there's this bitter taste for me if I ever watch them knowing that there's a ruling that the supernatural cannot be shown in Mainland Chinese cinema unless proven to be false or classic Chinese mythology, something which will immediate spoil these films if I ever watch them and the plot twists are obvious.

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It more so as there's a cultural communication old Shaw Brothers and Golden Harvest films had with folklore with horror stories. Even if by slapstick, martial arts and/or nasty Category III sleaze, those films with their ghosts and hopping vampires are so much more vibrant now with their seventies and eighties coloured gels and sets, openly embracing the unknown and mysterious whilst depicting old folk customs. The Eye is in vast contrast a post-Ringu (1998) film with an eye (no pun intended) on lingering, slow burn dread with melodrama, but it feels like a gaze back to the old films by way of the Pang Brothers, twins who are their own entire franchise having flirted with other genres (Bangkok Dangerous (1999)) but made their bread and butter horror cinema in the early 2000s in particular, enough to be hired for Western films in the same genre.

The Eye, long before a forgotten 2008 remake with Jessica Alba, has actress Angelica Lee as Mun, a woman blind since the age of two who is given eye transplant surgery. Immediately The Eye wins me over as it decides to linger on this process rather than immediately lead to scares. It feels the Pang Brothers were as interested in the notion of what the experience for someone blind since infancy gaining eyesight would be like, lingering upon it for a longer period in the first quarter. Emphasising Mun as someone to be sympathetic for by lingering on her life in the midst of this life changing event, it even touches on something openly haunting in the centre of a matter-of-life, throwaway scene of her watching footage of herself as a young blind child  with her mother. The Pang Brothers are obsessed with showing what it would be like to go through the adaptation of a new sensitory organ, both in terms of the post-surgery therapy which introduces her psychologist and potential love interest Dr. Wah (Lawrence Chou), and the profound psychological effects on a woman who never had sight barring for first minutes of her life. Appropriate for a film where its revealed said eye transplants allow her to see the dead, the new organs of sight, a concept she never had for her adult life, having a literal effect on her environments in ways others who have had sight since birth cannot share.

From https://thatwasabitmental.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/114666-1.jpg

The only issues I have with The Eye on reflection is that it sadly strays into average melodrama when it gets bored. Melodrama is not inherently a negative for horror - the best of the most delirious ero-guro and horror from Japan practically has melodrama for blood pumping in its veins - but it's not well written at times here and the Pang Brothers use emotional shorthand rather than let melodrama live up to its potential as being vibrant and willingly hysterical. Where I've softened to The Eye is that, in vast contrast to the car crash called The Eye II (2004), their first film is one of the few films to not only avoid obvious mistakes horror cinema makes but, in regards to the genre being a communication about folklore and one's beliefs in death, it makes a good discussion between scares even if it occasionally rambles and stutters on its words.

One of its best decisions, that remarkably few films actually consider, is that the protagonist does not try to convince anyone that she can see ghosts barring the one person it makes sense to disclose that concern to, her psychiatrist. We are saved the laborious clichés of her trying to convince others and them believing her to be mad are ignored, within a reality where because of the belief in spiritualism you have a fascinating divide between Dr. Wah and his father taking a rational view on the issue, but a strangely eerie scene also happening of a random woman in a cafe (never seen again) asking Mun about seeing a pair of ghosts who haunt the place as if she also can see them. Religious belief and modern science float in a conflicted air rather than pitted at odds with each other, only becoming muddied to a less interesting extent when the narrative reaches its conclusion in Thailand where it cheats in the drama a little. However with its sights of doctors and spiritualists being equally of social importance within the world, it's fascinating how it slips like Mun between both worlds without contradiction.

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When Mun does start to unravelled it's from the logical notion that she's finally unable to cope from the sights she experiences, a metaphor as much for struggling with her new sensitory organs as it is the inability to cope with literally seeing death. At first, she sees a faded figure stood within the middle of a crowded road, when driven back home from hospital by her older sister, but never utters even a squeak in reaction. Its only when the ghosts start to notice her and cling to her desperately that she locks herself in her bedroom, curtains closed, as one might do if suffering from a psychological breakdown as her family becomes fearful for her. The fact this is entirely forgotten in the sequel for screaming and jump scares is actually embarrassing in comparison when viewed together. The dead are also not malevolent, merely figures who drift like the abandoned amongst the living where they died, they negative influence on Mun from an inability to cope with them finally interacting with her, haunting corridors to the elevator in the film's most well known scene.

There could be an argument, as it makes up most of the lore of what Mun sees, that the view on suicide is a conservative one that might offend some, but it could also be viewed as a metaphor how if there is an afterlife those who commit suicide could still be stuck in a permanent loop unable to escape their despair, the school boy who is trying to find his school pass amongst those stuck in an unending cycle unless helped, the crux of the main narrative, stuck without being able to leave and move forwards into the beyond. The plot as it develops even evokes one of the causes of Ringu's back-story, a person able to see beyond normal sight - premonitions in RIngu, a figure here who can see the black shadows who take away the recently departed - but is not only ostracised by their community but is seen as the cause of death by those who fear such a concept irrationally. While the finale does suffer from soppiness that contradicts the sober tone The Eye builds upon, it does with a gristly, downbeat ending involving a large scale disaster emphasis a theme of acceptance in the unknown and death itself, not savoury material for a Western horror film for a large scale audience but here apparently accepted and not dampening the film's success globally in the slightest. 

From https://thatwasabitmental.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/0000216671.jpg

Masters of Horrors Season 1 Part 2

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Dreams in the Witch-House

Director: Stuart Gordon

Screenplay: Stuart Gordon and Dennis Paoli

Based on the short story by H.P. Lovecraft

Cast: Ezra Godden as Walter Gilman; Jay Brazeau as Mr. Dombrowski; Campbell Lane as Masurewicz; Chelah Horsdal as Frances Elwood

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #6

After the immense disappointment of Cigarette Burns, Stuart Gordon's entry was a safe way for me to get my confidence back with the series. Based on H.P. Lovecraft, it was a welcome change of pace purely for telling a story which was interesting and, in spite of likely being the middle of all of them in rank, succeeding with said story. Its particularly successful as well as my knowledge of Stuart Gordon's career is an odd, patchy affair considering how fascinating his filmography is on paper. (Also I'll admit I haven't been a huge fan of Re-Animator (1985); I might change my mind on a revisit, but for a while I openly admit to having preferred Brian Yuzna's sequel Bride of Re-Animator (1989) instead.) Gordon's career in general upon reflection deserves a deeper investigation, as few could attest to having gone between experimental stage plays to Charles Band productions, adapting Lovecraft to adapting David Mamet. Gordon's entry for Masters of Horrors also emphasises how there's a sub current of the series deserving to be called "Masters of (Literary) Horror" as well as most of the material is adaptations from various sources, from HP Lovecraft to EC Comics, Clive Barker to even Mick Garris adapting one of his own stories for his entry. It's a nice reminder of the dept horror cinema has to the printed page as much as a visual-audio medium, these short horror stories finding the right idea on paper of adapting small scale, personal horror stories.

The actual episode of Dreams in the Witch-House is pretty conventional, in which a protagonist (Ezra Godden) stays at a dilapidated rental apartment only to suffer from dreams of a witch and her familiar, a human faced rat, that may be more real than he thought, having evil machinations for the baby of the female resident (Chelah Horsdal) next door to his room he's becoming smitten for. But that's not something to complain about in this case as Gordon makes sure to make a solid adaptation of the material which provides the idiosyncratic twist itself, rationalising witchcraft through arcane and hidden science. This provides one of Lovecraft's most curious and inspired ideas, influenced from learning of the concept in his private life from study, of non geometrical space in theory allowing reality to bend and transport people in environment. As a result, the witch tropes within the film have a strange, distinct edge that stands out especially as most of the story stays within the home, peppered with the creepy details from Lovecraftian lore including a cameo by the Necronomicon. Adding to this is also the bleak ending, possibly stretch to absurd gory lengths with multiple conclusions, but befits an episode that was a suitable pick-me-up after the disappointment with the previous one.

From http://images2.fanpop.com/image/photos/10000000/Dreams-in-the-Witch-
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Incident In and Off a Mountain Road (2005)

Director: Don Coscarelli

Screenplay: Don Coscarelli, Joe R. Lansdale and Stephen Romano

Based on a short story by Joe R. Lansdale

Cast: Bree Turner as Ellen; Angus Scrimm as Buddy; John DeSantis as Moonface; Ethan Embry as Bruce

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #7

In vast contrast to Stuart Gordon and John Carpenter in these viewings, the director of the actual  first episode of Masters of Horror, (in terms of what was broadcast on television first), Don Coscarelli is someone I have no ideas upon. I have vague memories of watching the (then four) films of the Phantasm series when I was just getting into cult cinema but that's a century to myself now and the only clear image I have is a literal object, that I created one of the spiked floating spears from out of moulding putty and pieces from Warhammer 4000 sets that still sits on my window  years after now. For a long time it's only been Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) that gave me an image of Coscarelli as a director, but that was still a long while ago  as well. Aside from this, Coscarelli is an entire mystery for me, the time appropriate to correct that now Phantasm is a five film franchise currently and had all the bells and whistles thrown at it within 2017.

Incident On and Off a Mountain Road is a twist on a stereotypical horror trope seen many times before especially in modern straight-to-video chillers - a woman driving on an isolated midnight road finds herself the target of a deformed serial killer - the catch that, due to her previously having dated a survivalist, the relationship of a mirroring narrative, her ability to protect herself is something the killer nicknamed "Moonface" has never had to deal with. The result plays out as two separate stories connected by the protagonist Ellen (Bree Turner) having to deal with two male figures, one which is immediately dangerous as the stereotypical inbred rural sociopath, the other more insidious played by actor Ethan Embry, starting off as a charming man who just happens to have provocative opinions on the world burning around him but slowly is revealed to be more problematic, a paradox in how Ellen is both indebted to him for learning how to try to survive Moonface but with his back-story with her also leading to a breaking point for her as a human being. It's a less high concept premise from screenwriter/original author of the tale Joe R. Lansdale than his story for Bubba Ho-Tep - elderly Elvis and Ossie Davis as JFK fighting a mummy in a retirement home - but his taste for twisting conventions onto their head is the episode's best aspect, as is the fact the late Angus Scrimm completely goes against his cinematic image as the scene stealing figure Buddy, bouncing off his wheelchair like a hyper acting child wanting to engage in sing-along's with captive prisoners. He's a character you could easily find in one of the better Texas Chainsaw Massacre films, the first of many side characters in the first season of Masters of Horror who steal their stories outright whenever they're onscreen.

The one issue that decides whether a viewing will love Incident On and Off a Mountain Road is your reaction to the final plot twist, built up through the film but taken to a greater extreme than even the violence beforehand. The look and tone of the film viscerally fits the growing post-9/11, torture porn era of glossy scuzziness, a giant drill the killer's main weapon of choice and dead bodies more set decoration than objects of fear. The issue is more that, from a premise no matter how gristly it is thatfirmly stays within the entertaining for 90 percent of its length, the end twist does take on a greater severity including sexual violence which might come as an abrupt change of tone particularly with such content. Its less the use of such a scene, whilst itself a potential concern, but more the suddenness of it and intention, especially as this twist is like so many you usually find in horror story telling to create a jolt in a viewer for the end, but in this case uses something that levels the fantasy of the horror to rubble for something real and uncomfortable. It's a drastic twist, especially as its used at the end as a wraparound of the whole narrative, so your view on Incident On and Off a Mountain Road will change depending on one's reaction. For me personally, I'm on the fence as even without the provoking nature of how the twist's done, the sudden shift with how we should view the heroine is one I've still chewing on even if the potential trigger warning wasn't there. It's a rewarding episode, probably with the exception of Angus Scrimm however one which won't be at the top of the list when I think of the best of just this season of Masters of Horror. 

From https://wildinthestreetsblog.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/1225_19.jpg

Masters of Horror Season 1 Part 1: Cigarette Burns (2005)

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Director: John Carpenter

Screenplay: Drew McWeeny and Scott Swan

Cast: Norman Reedus (as Kirby); Colin Foo (as Fung); Udo Kier (as Bellinger); Christopher Redman (as Willowy Being); Chris Gauthier (as Timpson); Zara Taylor (as Annie)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Shows) #5

I felt a need to revisit Masters of Horror. Having only seen the first season years ago when it first came out, I remember the initial anticipation and public response of the episodes, a project which immediately stood out. It was a tantalising premise. Mick Garris, of many a Stephen King adaptation, produced an anthology series with no restrictions in content and some of the greatest horror film directors at the helm of individual episodes - John Carpenter, Tobe Hooper, Stuart Gordon - alongside new talents of that period like Lucky McKee to Takashi Miike. The result was a lot more complicated in result after one other season and an unofficial third called Fear Itself for another channel, but Season 1 of Masters of Horror itself was a curious creation, not just in the episodes themselves but at least one major controversy that questioned its original premise. In the UK, just for our American cousins who may be confused how these reviews will be orders, there was a very different order for the episodes from the initial (ill advised) attempt to release two episodes at a time on 2 disc DVD sets released separately, and then even in the two part season box sets, John Carpenter's Cigarette Burns the first of the episodes.

It itself was likely chosen as the first episode to release as it caught horror fans' interest immediately. The last major production before Cigarette Burns was Ghosts of Mars (2001), a divisive sci-fi horror film which would be his last theatrical film until 2011. Back then, I was watching this episode with a passing interest in Carpenter, growing up with The Thing (1982) and Halloween (1978). Now revisiting the episode, its having grown to admire Carpenter as a working director so good technically at his work he deserved auteur status regardless.

Cigarette Burns is sadly terrible. It follows the notion of a cursed film, Norman Reedus as a cinema owner and private collector of rare prints for wealthy customers searching for a legendary work called La Fin Absolue du Monde for Udo Kier, a film when screened in the seventies in a cinema caused deaths and violence in the audience. With a heap of personal tragedy in his own life, Reedus himself enters a vortex of strange phenomenon just on the hunt for the film before actually finding a print. It's an instantly fascinating idea, meta and potentially pretension with its continuous film references but a premise following Ringu (1998), has a great urban legend within itself of objects having a greater power than mere material of recording, cinema as a medium that can tap into a person's subconscious beyond simplistic surface emotions. Like Ringu, it also suggests the inherently haunted notion that film can resurrect the dead by their repeating images being permanently attached to film as long as it survives, which within a story where the protagonist is haunted by the death of his girlfriend, with her father with a gun at his side hanging outside Reedus' cinema, would be pertinent.

What happens however is that rather than leaving La Fin Absolue du Monde as a mere McGuffin whilst the hero investigates its existence, so many scenes even into the finale constantly repeat of how La Fin Absolue du Monde is an evil creation rather than demonstrate way and let the images or implications mortify the viewer. It's called evil. The people who saw it in the cinema call it evil in their scenes. One as a viewer has no ideas why it's exactly evil but characters keep banging on that its evil. So much so that not only will the images briefly seen won't live up to its build-up, closer to one of those intros Redemption Video would put in front of one of their Jean Rollin DVD releases barring the softcore nudity, but it's a crass implication of a far more powerful premise which wastes dialogue on repeating the exact same dialogue that La Fin Absolue du Monde is evil without depth.

Instead of the film being a haunted entity, the celluloid equivalent of Nigel Kneale's stone tape, it becomes part of an undeveloped pseudo Christian myth about angels and people driven to making snuff films, all of which that trivialises the inherent provocation of cinema as a construct, something which is more than an item to shot footage on but can be manipulated in material (physical or digital) to cause effects on the viewer. The subplot about Reedus' girlfriend cannot sustain itself either, evoking a lesser version of Event Horizon (1997) instead of slow burn psychological horror. In presentation, Carpenter like the other directors follows the strict production schedule of the series, although it's nice to see another Carpenter named Cody score his father's work, but honestly the real issue is the entire tone of Cigarette Burns from the beginning, reducing its premise to a faux evil which leads to a gory ending without any sense of actual dread to it. It's a disappointing way to begin Masters of Horror, surprising for me considering the praise the episode originally got as one of the strongest parts when The Ward (2011) was far more interesting than this. 

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Ringu 2 (1999)/Ring 0: Birthday (2000)

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Director(s): Hideo Nakata (Ringu 2)/ Norio Tsuruta (Ringu 0: Birthday)

Screenplay: Hiroshi Takahashi (Ringu 2/Ring 0)

Based on the work of Koji Suzuki

Ringu 2 Cast: Miki Nakatani (as Mai Takano); Rikiya Otaka as (Yoichi Asakawa); Nanako Matsushima (as Reiko Asakawa); Rie Inō (as Sadako Yamamura)

Ringu 0 Cast: Yukie Nakama (as Sadako Yamamura); Seiichi Tanabe (as Hiroshi Toyama); Kumiko Aso (as Etsuko Tachihara); Takeshi Wakamatsu (as Yusaku Shigemori)

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #111 & #112

Ringu (1998) was a perfect horror film. Imagine the short story structure of a horror film, or a radio drama expanded into ninety minutes¹, perfectly compassing a theme or concept within its length like the best of its literary and audio cousins. It's premise sounds so like an actual urban legend, a decade or so before Slender Man or Creepy Pastas like the cursed video came to be, already with the advantage of having built such a sound in-world legend that it elicits fears in viewers as if based on a legend that's more timeless. Eliciting fears of the unknown tapping into modern technology, the fear of finding a mysterious blank videotape that could be anything, like the unknown video clip online or other digital/physical object, matched by the hazy obsoleteness of VHS technology in the current day, a vehicle still venerated as much for its failures as it is its virtue in transporting information before the tech improved drastically. The lengthy mystery the protagonists follow to resolve the mystery, even if you know the answers on repeat viewings, is still fascinating, the unravelling of the mystery alongside the slow pace and characterisation still intense to participate in. Ringu was an incredible success leading to sequels, an American remake series, reboots and a crossover with the Ju-Oh series, but I'll stick to the immediate two sequels here². One is an example (RIngu 2) caught between embracing pure, irrational phantasmagoria but being completely alien to the original film to its detriment. The later (Ringu 0) is a prequel which explains so much in an A-to-A straightforward fashion, resulting in something as alive as an taxidermy display and cingeworthy to watch.

Ringu 2 at least makes a rewarding decision to follow a minor figure from the prequel named Mai (Miki Nakatani), a student investigating the cause of the events in the previous film's finale and trying to track down the first film's heroine, the result of which giving the sequel an immediacy in being set subsequently from the prequel, the horror now as a result of a fallout from the previous narrative. Even if its having to repeat the investigation of before, it now has the advantage of previous visual motifs from the cursed tape and Sadako being known and registering with fear in the sequel of the curse drawing over Mari and those she interacts with. The issue, where is drops the ball, is its indecisiveness in where it wants to go from here. It visibly wants to escape how narrowing the plot potentials of the original film will be to expand the mythology, completely disregarding the cursed videotape set-up with Sakado's curse being spread by peoples' minds and any television equipment in the room, all without fully jettisoning the entirely of the original plot's presentation. Either it needed to write ideas worthy of expanding out what is an already perfect horror lore, or fully remove the lore even if the result was blasphemous and closer to the type of rip-off you'd expect the Italian film industry to have made of American supernatural horror movies. Instead, its stuck in an area where the new ideas - the importance of water particularly as Sadako's weakness in connection to the well as a symbol - don't feel fleshed out and rushed.

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If it had fully committed to the vaguer, more ellusive form of horror which tires of a videotape you have to have potential victims see, and decides to spread its influence without such a teather, it could've reached the eerie mystery found in a masterpiece like Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Pulse (2001), the curse growing tired of its limited reach and growing after exposure to victims and previous cases, causing bystanders to the previous film to have their memories and thoughts tainted by the curse like a psychic contagion, spreading out wider and wider. In ways it actually predates what the 2002 version of Ju-On: The Grudge and how it followed a chain of victims as more people crossed incidents of previous curses, fitting as well considering the eventual crossover between the franchises. The film could've become a dreamlike experience if it pushed into this plot point more, managing at least one scene that redeems the film where a single clip of video footage is repeated so much that it transforms into something terrifying, the distortion and degredation of images literally the window for the supernatural to be encountered. Sadly the film stays straddled in the middle of both artistic choices. Where the lack of the cursed videotape feels arbitrary than leaving its confines for more ideas. Where suddenly Sadako wants to possess a young child, given them psychic powers, which makes little sense to her lore and does, in any context, feel like an exceptionally stupid plot idea with little explanation to justify it in-narrative. Where water becomes an important part of overcoming her, already mentioned and fitting her existing lore, but is convoluted in exactly how it works, ending the film inexplicably at a swimming pool like a less successful version of the ending of It Follows (2014).

Ring 0: Birthday should just be removed from canon. Sadako is turned from the haunting figure with a tragic past of previous films to a young, quiet woman in an acting troop in the late sixties/early seventies, actress Yukie Nakama less Sadako than a lesser reinterpretation of Sissy Spacek in Carrie (1976). It's a laborious viewing experience, slow but with most of its time spent on a conventional narrative structure with little to intrigue. A story that reaches its expected ending, having to lead to the first film, whilst following utterly unlikable characters - a female reporter with revenge on her mind for Sadako, members of the troop, the girlfriend of one of the members whose sympathetic to Sadako - whose characterisations are hazy in whether one should hate them, experiencing the corruption of Sadako, or we should be on their side as Sadako has an atmosphere around her that's already starting to kill people and haunt the trope. It's the kind of horror prequel that Hollywood would be accused of continually making many years before they ever did, where the central horror figure Sadako is turned into merely a parade of motifs from before without any of the realistic folklore or actual tragedy of the existing version. Symbolism of the original film without context but merely because it's expected to be there as decoration like wallpaper. In fact the only interesting part of the film is the theatrical play within the movie, a weird tale of a scientist bringing his daughter back to life through science with Western period costumes and decor on the stage, more fitting the Japanese's ability to create unconventional, genre shifting horror movies than the film around it, one that should be removed from memory.

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1. If you stay with the idea of the short tale, like a campfire story, that chills a listener for a short amount of time and transport it to other mediums, I find the best examples for short written stories is something read aloud that lasts 30 minutes to an hour, a radio story to be thirty minutes, and horror films to be around 90 minutes. Obviously there are exceptions, especially those that want to emphasis details like characterisation or mood, but it's usually apparent which films need that extra time or not depending on their content.

2. Then of course there's Ringu: Kanzenban (1995), the first ever adaptation for television which I reviewed HERE which is an utterly bizarre viewing experience by itself.