A Tale of Two Rings

From https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/
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[Warning: Spoilers Throughout]

The Ring Virus (1999)

Director: Kim Dong-bin

Screenplay: Kim Dong-bin and Kong Su-chang

Based on the novel by Kôji Suzuki

Cast: Eun-Kyung Shin as Sun-ju; Jin-young Jung as Choi Yeol; Doona Bae as Park Eun-Suh; Bae Doona as Park Eun-suh

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #140

After Ringu (1998), the Japanese film industry hit upon a goldmine. Sure Rasen (1998), the sequel released at the same time in cinemas which changed the tone and plot, bit the dust at the box office¹, but Ringu has a monumental affect in Japan and eventually outside the country. It lead to another first sequel in 1999 and a prequel in 2000, plus reboots from the late 2000s onwards. Outside of Japan, it became horror canon quite soon after being available in the West. Naturally other countries took interest and there were two remakes. One many known of came from Hollywood and Gore Verbinski, but what about the South Korean version?

From https://thatwasabitmental.files.wordpress.com/2011/01/ring-virus-4.jpg

The Ring Virus is pretty much a copy of the original Japanese film. (Well, the theatrical one, we'll get to how the TV movie Ring: Kanzenban (1995) surprisingly makes a surprising connection into all this). Virus takes most of the original theatrical film's plot structure verbatim, following as well a female journalist (now played by Shin Eun-kyung) who, investigating the mysterious death of a niece, discovers a cursed videotape that after viewing leaves the victim only seven days left before their death. It's nice to know how over in an entirely different culture, it doesn't need to be drastically changed in terms of the plot, strong enough as material that could've been an urban legend if not originally a novel. There's even the same grungy aesthetic I liked from the original, bringing in its own bleak palette and droning electronic score.

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However, even if I liked The Ring Virus, its predictable and sags significantly in the middle in pace to a crawl. Lifting the plotting of the original film ultimately makes it a movie many will find a chore to sit through, when the exact same plot points are repeated without much addition to it. The decisions involving the lead characters are as much an issue. The heroine's ex-husband from the original film is replaced with a coroner Choi Yeol (Jin-young Jung) who, despite initially coming off as detestable, is actually a cool character ultimately. His tendency to burst into armchair existentialism about death can get ridiculous, but this tendency alongside the decision to spend the last seven days of his life completing a really difficult jigsaw puzzle wins me over. Shin Eun-kyung, as the heroine, however is a major flaw for this film. The character is now shrill rather than a single mother who is forced to do her best to protect herself and her child, a daughter here, not as rewarding as a lead as Nanako Matsushima in the original Ringu or, as will be revealed, Naomi Watts in the American version.  

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The one big different out of any of the films is that Virus includes the neglected subplot that Sadako, now Park Eun-suh (Bae Doona), was actually a hermaphrodite and suffered rape by her half brother before her death, pushed down the well as all the versions of the character have. The only other version I've seen that includes this plot point is  Ringu: Kanzenban², which is strange to realise considering how obscure that TV movie, faithfulness to the original text not necessarily the case yet in places still bringing out plot points from Kôji Suzuki's source material in the obscurest entries.

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From http://horrornews.net/wp-content/uploads/
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The Ring (2002)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Screenplay: Ehren Kruger

Based on the novel by Koji Suzuki

Cast: Naomi Watts as Rachel Keller; Martin Henderson as Noah Clay; David Dorfman as Aidan Keller; Brian Cox as Richard Morgan; Daveigh Chase as Samara Morgan; Joe Chrest as Dr. Scott; Jane Alexander as Dr. Grasnik; Lindsay Frost as Ruth Embry

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #141

Eventually Hollywood remade Ringu and I confess, for its flaws, it's actually a rewarding take that has its own personality. One, more importantly, that doesn't make the same mistake as many Hollywood remakes of even their own cinema of being so broad and loud they're embarrassments. Gore Verbinski himself is one of those few legitimately fascinating directors who work in the mainstream of Hollywood, not a director christened an auteur like Christopher Nolan but a working director who yet stands out from his career decisions. He managed a Faustian pact which actually allows him to benefit in this up until recently where, before he left the franchise, as long as he directed a Pirates of the Caribbean film or a blockbuster, he's been allowed to also pepper his filmography with idiosyncratic projects. I admit that The Weather Man (2005), a comedy-drama in which Nicolas Cage plays a weatherman changing his life for the better, wasn't great but you don't expect it to follow the first Pirates of the Caribbean film as his next project. Nor Rango (2011), an eccentric animated western full of anthropomorphic characters that references anything from Sergio Leone or Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Nor A Cure for Wellness (2017), a two and a half hour, lavish horror movie. The kind of projects that, if any of them turned out to be successful, fans of cinema like me bored of Hollywood would be dying to see more of and bring us back under the Hollywood sign with interest.

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What's wonderful as well is that, even though The Ring is a mainstream horror remake, it feels a lot more experimental and idiosyncratic than other horror films that would be inspired by its box office success. Don't confuse that sentence with the idea Verbinski suddenly brought in Stan Brakhage references for the cursed videotape footage itself or anything overtly weird. (Though with that tape itself, which includes an ominous shot of a ladder and a chair spinning upside in the air, I can't help but wonder if Hans Richter's Ghosts Before Breakfast (1928) was an influence). It's not expected, when even Rob Zombie's Halloween (2007) felt compromised and only felt bolder in the more eccentric 2009 sequel, that Verbinski's take on Ringu, one of the first of these modern remakes of the 2000s, feels idiosyncratic to him and remarkably inventive. He gets carried away at points in ways that feel silly but his tale also has a distinct style that's memorable and effecting. Bleak, grey aesthetic sweeps over the film but it doesn't feel like bad "realism" that plagues modern horror cinema but deliberate, partially filmed in Washington state and, like The Exorcist (1973) also filmed in the region, sharing a similar urban concrete bleakness to the proceedings. Here, lack of colour was a purposeful choice, as is when he suddenly has a tree with blood red leaves against a grey sullen hill for sudden effect. He can stop the plot when Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) waits after her ex-boyfriend Noah Clay (Martin Henderson) to watch the cursed tape, to have her look out the window of his apartment complex, minutes passing as we through her eyes watch people live ordinary lives watching TV or going on with their lives for atmosphere.

From https://i.ytimg.com/vi/_PkgRhzq_BQ/hqdefault.jpg

Naomi Watts in the lead is also a godsend. One of the other mistakes of a lot of Hollywood films is always casting young actors that visually appeal to a young audience, male or female, but without actual personality to them. Here casting Naomi Watts you have a great actress who at this point juggled mainstream films with David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001), and can bring a gravitas to the material. Martin Henderson as Noah is more of a hunky, pin-up figure than Hiroyuki Sanada's original ex-husband character, but he's as interesting as a likable figure who, in an idiosyncratic detail, is a video technician who can provide a different role as someone close to the heroine to help solve the mystery, alongside more affability that makes his eventually death as tragic and scary as it was in the first Ringu. Watts by herself is a considerable advantage, emphasising one of Ringu's secret virtues being its interest female protagonist, one which if you get the right person as with Watts for an American version emphasises this virtue more.

From http://horrorfreaknews.com/wp-content/uploads/
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That the story fits the new geographical and cultural location helps greatly. The basic premise of a cursed videotape like a good urban legend can translate with some retelling. The material which might have been lost in translation - that Sadako's mother in the original film was a shamed psychic - is replaced with a slice of American gothic, which helps replaces what could've ripped the heart out of the film is not replaced properly fully. Here its rural gothic, horses a reoccurring symbol as Sadako (now Samara here) was the daughter of a horse breeder who, after multiple miscarriages, finally was blessed with a child only for Samara's psychic gifts to be horrifying. Aspects of this version now bring in elements of psychodrama and medical based horror as the back-story has Samara being in a medical facility for part of her life, evoking for me sixties American cinema where psychoanalysis and medical facilities became part of the country's cinematic tapestry in terms of madness and the dark side of human beings. As a cocktail of influences, it's fascinating to pick them all out whilst remembering that it's still a retelling of the original Ringu. Ringu itself was an old Japanese ghost story transferred to the modern day so the US Ring is appropriate in modernising such material within its own sources from various eras.

From http://www.joblo.com/images_arrownews/ring02-7.jpg

Sometimes this film can be over the top. I'm thinking how, whilst having Brian Cox in a small role is always awesome as Samara's surviving and mentally scarred father, his decision to bring every pieces of electronics in his house into the bathtub to electrocute himself just comes off as absurd. The horse jumping off a ship in fear of the curse too. In being a remake of the original it's also having to deal with scenes iconic from the Japanese film too. I don't mind the cursed videotape's content, even if parts of it are overegged in terms of being horrifying, but it struggles with having to remake the scene of Sadako/Samara crawling through the television screen at the end when the original was perfect by itself. But I admire the restraint on display. It manages to avoid the clutches of modern horror's greatest of failings, the over bearing music and emphasis on jump scares, for the most part. Hans Zimmer provides a rich score and even if the film does occasionally fall prey to cheap scares it stays as a more atmospheric, creepy tale instead.

From http://www.quartertothree.com/fp/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/Ring1.png

Gore Verbinski decided to bring a lush but carefully used sense of style to the material, making it feel like an A-Picture, and this sense that he cared for the material along with everyone else who worked on it means so much. That was what lead to the term "remake" being a dirty word for many movie fans, the cineastes and the casuals alike, when the creators were visibly just doing a day job. Not even doing it to the best expected for a nine-to-five career, as one would presume in any other vocation like the food industry or craft, let alone an artistic medium. That was what eventually caved in the J-Horror boom, as Japanese (and Asian) terror flicks were being remade, as they became critically and financially unrewarding. The 2002 version of Ring was very successful, leading to them, but not one should pin any blame on this film when it was actually a good movie in the first place. Blame everything else afterwards for not learning what went right here..

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1) Reviewed HERE.

2) Reviewed HERE.