Efficient movie but... what's the point?
"Make quickly a copy!", this is not the message of the movie, it is more like the current trend of the American movie industry, as soon as they see a foreign movie that works in its local country! "The ring", but soon it will be "Ring2", "Ring0", which will be sum up in a single movie, as well as "Dark water", "Kairo", "Cure", "The Eye", "Failan", "My wife is a gangster", "My sassy girl", "No blood no tears", "Bangkok Dangerous"... Are we supposed to expect the same result for all those remakes? (let's remember that remakes of French blockbuster "Taxi", and French Academy awarded "Read my leaps" are also planned.. can you explain me why doing a remake of "Taxi"???)
Let's be honnest, "The Ring" is a good and efficient product, and some scenes are worth it (like the horse scene, probably the best of the whole movie). They tried to do an American version of the story, with an American way of thinking, American-like relationships between the characters, and why not? But it has to be credible, which is not the case when we see the mother-son relationship (just compare with "Dark Water", you will see the big gap in terms of psychological realism). I wouldn't have had any objection if only they would have based their movie on the book (coz yes, "Ringu" is based on a novel by Kôji Suzuki..), giving us another interpretation of it: after all, Milos Forman and Stephen Frears both adapted French novel "The Dangerous Liaisons", and both were almost simultaneously made and don't look like each other at all.
But there, you get the feeling to see a duplicate, with only a few changes to be like "you see? We didn't make it the same!!!". There is no real vision of the story, and it seems there were no effort to find in it an echo in the US, on the contrary of what Bernard Rose did in his adaptation of "Candyman", taking place in America (in the book, it takes place in England, and the context is quite different).
Let's make our opinion on the movie itself now. Like I said, the movie is efficient, there are a few good moments in it, with a good cinematography and a good directing. The thing is the tension which is supposed to grow, which is - let's say it - the main interest of the movie, has nothing to do with the original version in terms of intensity... Just like if we compare the two directors: Nakada Hideo is a true artist who does not need to scare us with big surprise effects, whereas Gore Verbinski appears like a technically good movie maker, good enough to make us wait for the next effect, using subliminal images to reinforce it...
What I reproach to the movie is its way to pervert the story to make it look like a simple "scary movie". The fear lies on easy déjà-vu effect, whereas the Japanese movie didn't show anything like bloodshed, didn't try to make us scream from surprise but had the ability to make us progressively and insidiously feel more and more unconfortable.
The American movie spoils every important scene of the story by using those big heavy effects. The best example is the end of the movie: at the precise point where the tension was extreme in the Japanese movie, the scene is cut by this fast and furious car thing, which breaks all the impact of the climax. When will American movie makers understand that brutality does not make fear grow? Another example: when the main character is supposed to go down to find the corpse, the slow journey of the Japanese character going down (as if she was going in the darkness of her own unconscience) is replaced by Naomi suddenly falling down. Not that this moment is not entertaining, but there is not subtlety anymore since we do not have the time anymore to appreciate the moment and eventually anticipate what is going to happen. And according to me, this big contrast symbolizes very well the big gap between the two movies.
What was good in the original version is that we were just fooled and could only know what was really going on in the end, the fear was not coming from where it was expected to. In this one, after each "scary scene", you're just like "Ok, so what's next?", like when watching "final destination" or any other movie like that. It sounds like they are actually scared that the audience gets bored and leaves the theater if they do not put a "scary scene" every 10 minutes! They didn't understand what the atmosphere really lied on, they even forgot the real subplot of the story. Even the young girl, who turned into a martyr, just loses her aura, she is just not scary anymore! By the way, they even showed her face, which is a BIG mistake!!!
As for the actors, Naomi Watts partly saves the movie just with her presence (I would even dare saying she is a better actress than the Japanese one! Not that the Japanese one is not good, but let's say it's just because I think she is actually a very good actress, generally speaking), but the other ones are not very good: the American kid is unbearable (while the Japanese one was almost scary), and we cannot believe for one single second in his relationship with his mother (he should be the one asking for her attention!). As for the ex-husband, well the guy is far from being as charismatic as the Japanese actor, he looks like a big good heavy American dude, who does not even know how to play the scary guy!
Just one more thing. Maybe I am wrong, but I tend to think they voluntarily put a few things from "Ring2" and "Dark Water" in this adaptation.. If it's true, well Gore you have to get updated! Isn't there already a remake of "Dark Water" planned?
If only Gore Verbinsky or any other guy from the production had read the book! He could have worked on another base and escape from this unavoidable comparision. It's such a duplicate, despite of their attempt to americanize the story... Some people will say it's actually what it was meant to be, but I will say that we come to another question: what's the point in remaking such a recent movie if there is nothing more to say? All this shows the laziness of American producers. Hopefully we still have Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson to surprise us, even with adaptations!
