One of the better horror movies out there

Rating: 9/10 (13 July 2003)

My girlfriend and I saw the original in Japanese, and we both agree that the US version is much more suspenseful and scarier than the Japanese one, with the exception of some extraordinarily creepy sequences in the Japanese version. One of the small but significant changes from the original was that the Japanese version had the girl's face mostly hidden by her hair and she never makes eye contact, which I found more effective than Verbinski's treatment. The original also had one scene that I thought was a bit creepier than the remake, when the girl comes to attack the man. Other than that, the changes made were mostly positive.
Japanese plots tend to be short on causality and detail, so the story changes, which add about a half hour to the original story line, serve to make the plot coherent to Westerners. The production values in Japan make the fairly high-budget original with A-list actors look like a B-movie to people accustomed to Hollywood films. The ending shows the difference between cultures, since in the original Japanese, the woman appeals to her father for help.
There are holes in the plot, as many people have pointed out in reviews. Those that remain are either intentional, like those relating to the essentially unsolved mystery of the tapes and the girl, or were left over from the original Japanese.
The lighting and deliberately limited spectrum enhance the mood of the film greatly. The attack on the ex-boyfriend occurring during daylight hours is surprisingly effective even though it flouts the normal rules of horror films. One of the things I liked most about this movie is that it is a bit unconventional, through a combination of good director choices and some fresh ideas borrowed from Japan. People who were expecting to see a kill-em-all slasher flick were probably disappointed by the relatively slow pace in the building of the story and suspense.
Overall, I found the film to be a very good treatment of the original story and a fairly creepy horror movie too. It doesn't try to startle you into being frightened, it doesn't offer lots of gore and shocking violence, and it doesn't play down to the audience. The result is a slightly cerebral and haunting movie. There are some images and scenes that will stay with you and still give you the creeps for quite some time after you see it.