A vast improvement over the original

Rating: 9/10 (24 October 2005)

"The Ring" is a remake of "Ringu" in the most strict sense of the word. The story lines are almost identical. It's been a while since i placed close attention to the Japanese version, but a lot of its shots & angles seem to have been copied as well.
This sounds like a miserably failed nephew of Gus Van Sant's "Psycho 1998", but where a bloody shower was no recipe for quality, "The Ring" maintains a degree of tension throughout which elevates it above the original. Perhaps it accomplishes this mainly because of the Americanized (familiar) thrills & storytelling and the polished look of the production. However I also find the background on the murder of the psychic girl to be more comprehensible. Her nature seems less predictable, which leaves room for a few last-minute plot twists. Agreed, in retrospective most of them are in line with "Ringu" again, but i'd assumed at that point we'd be taking a different path. Another nice altering was the cursed videotape itself: the images were closer related to the psychic girl's past, and with all the technical research involved, it plays a bigger part, lol. Viewed in a darkened television room on my own, this movie gave me genuine shivers. Few can claim that.