The danger of remakes.

Rating: Null/10 (22 October 2002)

Scariest film ever seen?! What? You've obviously never heard of the original Japanese film, "Ringu", since it's unavailable in the U.S. Therefore, as with most American remakes of foreign films that are little or unknown in the U.S., the remakes, or shall we say, ripoffs get all the credit for things like "originality, creativity, innovation". Haven't you ever heard of "COPYING"?
*SPOILERS AHEAD!*
With the exception of Naomi Watts, who makes the protagonist shine in the film, this remake essentially copies the Japanese film note for note and adds some silly embellishments of it's own to try and make it scarier, when all it does is teeter on farcicality and overkill. In the original, the victims die with a horrified look on their face, as if they died seeing their absolute worst fear. In the remake, they also die with a contortion on their face, but with a melodramatic touch by giving the dead victims corpse-rot so grandiose, you wonder how someone could've died like that. Well, only in a Hollywood flick you can, whereas the original without the added effects are infinitely more frightening in that they are BELIEVABLE. There are no little segments with the fly being lifted from the TV set in the original, which was a nice touch but seemed a bit gratuitous. The scenes where the father commits suicide in the bathtub and the horse jumps off of the boat are completely over the top and therefore, fail to scare. There are no session videotapes with the little girl, which were inserted in the remake because Hollywood felt that American audiences were too "dumb" to think for themselves and figure out through inference that the ghostly little girl's intent was one of evil. And last but not least, is the video itself. The big-budget ups the estrogen by giving the video all kinds of weird extra visuals, such as people writhing in water, a woman falling off of a cliff, a rope coming out of a mouth, and on and on until it becomes an artsy-fartsy freak show. The original video, on the other hand, focused on a few images, some really frightening sounds, and instead of hearing a pseudo-scary little girl's voice saying "7 days" in the remake, you simply hear those scratching scary sounds on the videotape over the phone in the original.
However, the similarities between this remake and the original are so similar, they may as well be exact! For instance, the photograph with the warped faces on it, taken right out of "Ringu", note for note. The well with the little girl, the structure of the video, and the hair drawn in front of her face and wearing the nightgown as she walks to the TV zombielike before coming through the TV, and the actual story itself and how it progresses....what else can I say?
This is the danger of remakes. If the film is well known and known to be a remake, then fine and dandy. But, because Hollywood takes obscure foreign films that no one has ever heard of, it gives them not only reign to steal as much as they like from the films, but it draws the average viewer in and snows them into thinking they're seeing something that's original and new. They don't realize that what they're seeing is a fraud and a scam. The sad thing is, there is also such a thing as a good remake, one that can withstand the original in it's own unique way rather that rip off of it. The most this remake does is tries to amplify what was already done in the original with messy results. The original was frightening in that it focused on particular fears with sound and imagery, while this remake simply tries to do too much and pulls itself apart.
There is a place for this remake, but don't dare call it the best horror film you've ever seen without having seen what it stole from.