Sweet and pretty version of the Japanese shocker

Rating: 8/10 (2 November 2002)

Well, being a big fan of the original, I didn't know what to think about an American remake being made. I thought all the usual stuff you might think when a remake of one of your favorite movies is made... "It'll never be as good as the original" "I'm sure they'll change tons of stuff to Americanize it" etc, etc. Well now that I've finally seen it, the answer is yes and no.
Yes, now we have a prettier version of the film and the story. For one thing, we have gorgeous Australian beauty Naomi Watts and her incredible big blue eyes, and even Samara (American version of Sadaku) is a little pretty little girl who can either charm you or kill you. But that is understandable, is America for Christ sake, you have to make everything pretty. For the most, the photography and the editing were just a little above average. And the horror scenes if not utterly excessive were faithful remakes of the originals. At the end, it reinforced the opinion the original gave me of television.
For those who might not know by now, the story centers around a journalist who is investigating certain videotape that kills whoever sees it within a period of 7 days. So, she has only a week to find how to solve the mystery before she also dies under the curse of the video. Vengeance, despair, and children misunderstanding form part of what might as well become a new cult hit or one heck of a good contender for the golden raspberry.

Now, the bad parts ***possible spoilers***. This is easy, since it is always more feasible to trash a movie than raise what is good about it. It is known that when a remake of anything is made, part of the deal is to change what you might consider not necessary or add something to improve the so called narrative. In this case, they tried to make the plot "fool proof"; I can't stand that even for the slightest little detail there has to be a sometimes stupid explanation or flashback and never leaving anything to the imagination, which sometimes is more frightening than actual visual aids (remember the Blair Witch?), and that is one of the beauties of the original, the mixture of suggestion versus visualization. And for the plot itself, the changes they made of the origins of Samara's evil were not convincing at all, I liked it better when Sadaku was more like a vengeance for what her mother suffered, over here is just a bad spawn.
Overall I liked it, when the final climax came, my heart beat increased, and when I least expected it, I was at the edge of my seat even though I knew what was going to happen, and that shows how well it works.