31 Days, 31 Horror Reviews Day 8: Ring

1998.

We’ve now progressed far enough into the Nineties that we’ve reached the J-horror explosion. One of the biggest movies of that fad was Ring (AKA “Ringu”), directed by Hideo Nakata. This is a film that, in this hemisphere at least, has been mostly supplanted by its Americanized remake. When I say “The Ring”, you’re probably thinking of Naomi Watts and Gore Verbinski. The Ring ended up being the prototype for an entire craze of Hollywood remakes of movies all across East Asia. Some of those remakes were solid, such as 2004’s The Grudge, which stayed mostly unchanged. Most were horrendous acts of butchery, like the 2005 version of Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s masterpiece, Pulse. 

(Thanks, Harvey Weinstein, you ruined that too, you piece of shit.)

Ring is an important movie for more reasons than just a fad. If you've seen any movie made this century with a creepy little girl with long black hair covering her face, they probably were inspired by this. Sadako, the evil little girl who will kill you in seven days, must be regarded as one of the great icons of horror. The trope of creepy ghost women in Japanese folklore is one that goes back centuries, But Sadako is one that made stringy-haired pale waifs an object of nightmares across the globe. From F.E.A.R. to A Tale of Two Sisters to Cabin in the Woods, Sadako's influence is vast. Also, much of the modern creepypasta obsession with cursed media is predicted by Ring. Would there be a Slenderman without Sadako?

There were actually two different J-horror explosions in the West. One was the mass-plundering remake fad already discussed. The other was a more respectable recognition in the West of Japanese filmmaking and style. Movies like Audition, Ichi the Killer, and Battle Royale made their way across the Pacific largely unaltered and found niche audiences. Eventually those movies, especially Battle Royale, had immense cultural impacts of their own. We did not need a single American actor to translate it.

I would like to say that with Ring America got this wrong. I'll admit, I'm against Westernizations. I have always been suspicious of the impulse behind these remakes. I know a lot of audiences do not like subtitles, I know a lot of audiences do not want to watch something foreign. Neither of those urges feel all that great to me. People should have open minds and experience more varied culture. Studios also are underestimating audiences here. People can feel sympathy for movie characters even if they aren’t a blonde English-speaking White lady.

That said, I am sad to report that 1998’s Ring is a worse movie than the 2002 version. I really expected to like the Japanese version better, and I just don’t. Nanako Matsushima is not a bad actress, she is able to play the part played by Naomi Watts successfully enough. The great Hiroyuki Sanada is definitely a trade-up from Martin Henderson. I also like that this version of Ring has color and is not bathed entirely in a blue filter like Verbinski’s movie. The 1998 version is a very handsomely-shot movie. But it isn't as fun. Not for me, sorry.

It's an unfair fight in a lot of ways. Verbinski had a bigger budget and modern CG effects. The huge climatic moment of Sadako (Rie Inō)’s big reveal is still terrifying in 1998’s version. (I say I'm not too impressed by Ring, but this is the first movie so far to have given me a nightmare after seeing it.) But where Verbinski can have her body seep water and stutter like VHS static, that can’t happen here. Her hair and clothes are even neater. I think it’s a great scene in either version, and the 1998 movie needs respect for being first. But Verbinski wins this fight.

The bigger problem is that the rest of this 1998 version is very slow. It’s a movie mostly set in libraries or news offices or editing studios, only breaking that up to sit around apartments or hotels. There’s a ticking clock until the seven days pass, which adds tension. But there is nothing happening on the way to that countdown. The American version throws a few jump-scares in. The Japanese version has nothing along the way. We have a very scary opening, very scary ending, and frankly boring middle. Worse, Matsushima and Sanada have no chemistry. They’re supposed to be ex-spouses, so you expect some tension there. Instead I am left with no idea why they broke up or why they were ever together in the first place.

Beyond technical execution, Ring has been a concept that has survived the test of time. Almost nobody has a working VHS player anymore but Ring movies still keep coming out. There have been thirteen different Ring movies in three languages. There are two alternate sequels to Ring in Japan, which both spawned their own side-franchises. The Ring is big enough that it launched its own Freddy vs. Jason-style crossover movie in 2016. That’s Sadako vs. Kayako, basically The Ring vs The Grudge, a wonderfully wild concept that fills my heart with joy. Who would you rather be killed by? The creepy black-haired girl in the attic or the creepy black-haired girl in the TV? 

I am so glad to live in a word of infinite wonders such as these.

Next time we travel to 1999, the year of Monica, Erica, Rita, Tina, Sandra, Mary, and Jessica all discovering that Lou Bega was cheating on them, John Elway's final rodeo, and our next movie, The Sixth Sense.