Hollywood Polishes Japanese Inexpensive Original

Rating: 6/10 (15 September 2004)

This American remake of a Japanese inexpensive but ambitious horror, Ringu, shows what Hollywood can do in order to give a film production a better surface. The U.S. version, The Ring, arguably has a better content of the cursed videotape, with an apparent influence from the surrealism. The viewers may be more easily identified with The Ring's Noah (Martin Henderson), who is skeptical about supernatural phenomena, than with Ringu's Ryoji (Hiroyuki Sanada), who possesses an ESP. In The Ring, the protagonist's son Aidan (David Dorfman) has more significant role, in both storytelling and creating the atmosphere (wearing the archetypical Hollywood's horror-flick makeup), than the Japanese counterpart does. Several details added in the American version (e.g., a horse jumping into the sea from a ferry) deepen the backdrop, while the post-production that manipulates the pictures into a blue tone generates a chilly mood. Overall, in this case, what Hollywood offers works, resulting in making a more polished entertainment.