Nowhere near as scary as the original

Rating: 2/10 (22 November 2002)

Remakes of movies are often considered to pale in comparison to the original. In this case, The Ring has gone beyond pale. It's practically transparent. Case in point: I gave the original Ringu a 9; this movie I'm giving a 2. To be fair, if I had not watched the original movie before this one, I would probably give it a few more points
So where does this movie go wrong? I would say most of the fault lies with the director, Gore Verbinski, and his, well, chosen direction for the movie. He's taken one of the best horror movies out there, and art house-ified it. The result is a movie with luxurious cinematography but horribly inopportune splicing. In virtually every scene that's supposed to build to a scare, the movie ducks out before the payoff. And the montage that's on the cursed video simply looks like a collection of random shots, whereas the original montage looked appropriately like a portent of doom.
The screenplay for this movie mirrors the original significantly. Unfortunately, I didn't care for the deviations the writer made. I don't recall too much of Ringu, having watched it years ago, but I'm pretty sure the horses weren't part of it and the boy wasn't psychic. I felt they were diversions that distracted from the main Samara plot. And oh yes, "Samara" doesn't sound half as creepy as "Sadako," not to mention how much creepier Sadako looked too. The only thing I liked about the plot was that it managed to explain the aspects of the curse decently, including stuff I didn't catch in the first movie like the symbolism of the ring.
It's terribly frustrating, trying to understand The Ring's appeal, particularly since most of the people who've seen it say it's scary. I reckon that if they ever watched Ringu, they'd have a heart attack.