Good, but unnecessary remake

Rating: Null/10 (7 April 2004)

After seeing the fantastic original 'Ringu', I watched this remake suspecting it would be a noisy, gory slam-bang hollywood rehash. Fortunately, I was wrong. The Ring is a well made remake and follows the original quite closely, even in atmosphere. It's close enough to say that if you hate this movie, you probably won't like the original either. Some sequences are even shot-by-shot the same. Acting is adequate, cinematography is excellent, the pace is good. Unfortunately, there are some issues with this remake imho.

They replaced some important storylines of the original with that really lame horse nonsense.

The 'scary' make up effects are overdone and not scary at all.

The 'samara' character is too flat and too young. She's just plain evil in this flick where in the original she's a 18ish teenager with a more complex and sad background (see Ring 0: Birthday) which makes it more thought provoking and believable that she became what she is.

The ending is not as satisfying as the original.

While pacing is good (I'm glad it still has the quiet pace of the original), it's not as good as in the original where its momentum gradually builds up until it's firmly stuck under you skin.

Now I still think it's quite good, but it doesn't add anything over the original to make it really worthwhile. If you don't mind watching a subtitled japanese movie, definitely go for the original Ring (aka Ringu).