Sorry, this movie sucks

Let me be very fair here, this is not the best movie in my opinion. But, this movie is fun, it has purpose and is very enjoyable to watch.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Having seen the Verbinski film first. I was not as scared as I likely would be otherwise. However, there is one advantage the Nakata film objectively has.The plot made more sense.For instance, take when the female leads learn about how Sadako/Samara ended up in the well. In the Verbinski film, we just have Rachel get a vision while looking for Samara's body. Without much explanation for how she could see a memory that wasn't her own. In the Nakata film, however, it was explained earlier that Reiko has ESP, as does Ryuji.Also, Sadako's story being less revealed than Samara's better feeds into the mystery of how the tape was made. Or for that matter, why Sadako does all the bad things she does. The lack of detail on her character also feeds into the idea of her being completely evil. Lastly, it doesn't explain who Rachel will show Aidan's copy to. (Though she does show it to a death row inmate in a deleted scene). In the Nakata film, Reiko plans to have her dad watch the tape for Yoichi's sake.In general, both are fine. But the plot of this one is much better.

After watching a mysterious videotape, a woman finds herself cursed to die within a week afterward searches the various clues within the video to find the truth about the tape's origins and connection to a legend about a vicious woman before her time runs out and the curse consumes her.While this one had some really good stuff, overall the flaws here take centerstage. The main aspect hurts this one is the fact that the main storyline is incredibly flawed and makes little sense. As the ghost wants her body found out, the purpose of making a videotape that originates in a backcountry community that plays only on a locally-broadcasted channel that's supposed to generate interest in solving her mysterious disappearance, an event that's counterintuitive to what she really wants. Rather than bringing a discovery to her situation, placing the means of your discovery should come about rather easily rather than going for a more crowd-friendly atmosphere instead of an isolated and partially obscure part of the country is far more ideal and thus setting up the rampage to follow. Likewise, purposefully killing those who are potentially there to help makes the whole point moot as that shrinks the number of those able to potentially help the cause, really leaving the plot quite troublesome. Beyond that, the fact that the film is just so slowly-paced and lacking of ghost action that the middle segment completely eliminates the killing to focus on the investigation into the video tape's images and source. This is spent more on looking for photographs of the missing couple, visiting the different locations of the classmates such as their school or the cabin in particular where they contracted the curse or sitting around attempting to understand the concept of the curse with her boyfriend as she is getting him to believe in the curse and trying to decipher it all, and none of those are crawling with horrific ideas or concepts. These are practically non-events that while building up the mythos around the legend all tend to prevent this one from really getting going leaving this to drag on to the final twenty minutes. Granted, that's great stuff that happens here, but it comes too little too late to save the rest of the film though it somewhat evens it out to make it borderline watchable. The film's at it's best when detailing the creepy and oftentimes downright chilling atmosphere of the tape, offering up plenty of suspense as they slowly work out the cause and details of the tape. Knowing how the visuals were created and how they came to be affixed onto the tape itself offers this one it's best sense of energy and atmosphere as one-by-one all the pieces slowly work themselves together to realize how their journey ties together. From the distorted photographs leading into the idea of the island and the research they conduct their as well as the revelations about the child in the past which starts to play a prominent role in how this one ends up. From the encounter in the well with the body to the stellar and absolutely chilling sequence with the ghost making one last appearance inside their house for a truly shocking and memorable scare. Coupled with an effective ghost design that's really creepy, these hold this one up.Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Language and intense themes of children-in-jeopardy.

Maybe the biggest and most popular Japanese horror film in recent years – certainly one of the few to garner world-wide attention and an immediate Hollywood remake – RING is a thoughtful, delicately-paced movie that suggests more than it shows. Like all such classic horror movies, the emphasis is on a creepy atmosphere and careful scenery building rather than violence or sudden loud crashes in the music. It's an atypical film, one which (like most of the 'new wave' of Asian horror films) requires a certain amount of patience to be able to sit through all the dialogue and scenes where nothing much in the way of action happens. But viewers are rewarded by plenty of splendidly creepy moments (as in the "leave your lights on afterwards" sense), which build to a genuinely suspenseful climax which even throws in a few twists to startle the viewer who believes he or she is ahead of the game.RING is a low budget film, but the lack of money helps rather than hinders the project. For a start the film seems realistic, shot in real houses instead of sets, and with actors who turn in accomplished performances as normal, everyday people. The slow pacing makes this feel like a documentary and it's actually refreshing to see a film without needless car chases and fancy FX sequences (unsurprisingly, these popped up in the US remake). Nanako Matsushima is fine as the journalist mother, forever neglecting her son, and the scenes requiring her to show fear are fantastic. Hiroyuki Sanada, one of my favourite Japanese actors of all time, is equally excellent as Matsushima's ex-husband, who also watches the videotape and finds himself desperately investigating the past in order to save himself, his wife and his son in the present.The videotape is always the centre piece of attention in the movie and the images we see on screen are deliberately thought-provoking, bizarre, abstract, almost dream-like shots which have the power to send a chill down the spine of the most stalwart watcher. The spooky bits get better as the film progresses: the interlude in the soggy well is a frightening set-piece although nothing happens, just the suspense of the situation is enough to make it work. The scenes involving the child apparition Sadako are superbly portrayed and should get a reaction out of the most hardened watcher. RING is a great movie that refuses to serve up a detailed plot line to the audience. Viewers are required to put thought and imagination into the film, in order to work out what is going on and to get the full effect. Those who do will surely agree that this is a successful, effective, quietly creeping horror classic that builds up the best sense of dread in any film I've seen.

I am one of those people who wished they had seen the original version before seeing the remake. I made this mistake twice now. Not anymore. Last year, around the same time, I started watching Japanese horror movies. I watched The Grudge trilogy (2004, 2006 & 2009) before watching the 2000 movies, Ju-On: The Curse and its sequel; which I both had mistaken for the movies that was remade as The Grudge, despite the fact that certain elements were taken from The Curse; such as the jaw scene. However, luckily enough, I have a chance to make this right when I plan on watching Dark Water soon. I also watched Kairo (2001) before watching its American remake: Pulse (2006), and I'm glad I did. If you haven't seen it yet, I strongly urge you to do so.Ringu is a quite minimalistic horror movie as a whole, which is definitely not a bad thing. In fact, it's even better. Overall, I prefer The Ring over Ringu, but there are certain elements that Ringu has that its American remake, The Ring, doesn't have. Ringu doesn't rely on jump scares as much as The Ring does. Like most Japanese horror movies that came after Ringu, it relies on its atmosphere. While the feeling of dread is surely not missed in The Ring, the combination with its cheap scare tactics is what ultimately weakens the atmosphere in comparison.As a result of watching The Ring before Ringu, I was quite underwhelmed by the last scene of the movie. I did not feel frightened by the scene because I knew what was coming. If I hadn't seen the remake first, and thus hadn't known what would happen, this movie surely would've scared the living hell out of me. In the end, The Ring blew Ringu right out of the water. But for reasons very obvious: a bigger budget and improved technology, it is clearly the superior movie. A 6/10 for Ringu, and an 8/10 for The Ring.