not bad, not good, but better than other recent films

Rating: Null/10 (29 October 2002)

In 1999-2000, I spent a year in Korea teaching English. While there, I had a very surreal experience. Before the summer of 1999, all Japanese imports, including films, were banned in Korea. Beginning that summer, the moratorium on Japanese cultural imports was lifted. One of the first Japanese films released in Korea at this time was "Ringu." However, since it needed to be captioned into Korean, it was released six months after it's initial release in Japan, just in time to be in theaters with the Korean remake, "Ring." (Apparently this is why the American remake was called "The Ring.") My surreal experience was going to see the Japanese version in a multiplex also showing the Korean "Ring" at the same time, with all the Koreans panning the Korean version and flocking to the Japanese version.
Back to the topic at hand, I liked the American version better than the Japanese version. The Japanese "Ringu" was basically what I call a "yap" movie, where the there's so much story that all the characters can do is basically make discoveries and discuss it with each other. The American version has much more action, and is much faster-moving than the original.
However, a copy is still a copy. The final scene where the "monster" is revealed is much more effective in the original, just because to me, it's the 2nd time I've seen it. Others who watch the remake first may disagree. (What interests me, however, is that I think the American version used the exact same clip and/or technique as the original version. Close viewing of the "monster" scene shows that it was filmed in reverse and played forward, just like the original.)
But, the American version didn't just copy the copy of the original, but threw in a whole bunch of other modern themes as well, such as the creepy little girl (The Others), the little quasi-psychic boy (The Sixth Sense), the quest for a father theme (The Rookie,) and female protagonist not dying (I know what you did last summer, Scream, Halloween, too many others to count.)
Overall, the highest complement I can give this film is that I didn't feel ripped off, which is pretty high praise nowadays.