A crappy remake

Rating: 3/10 (26 March 2003)

First of all, I'd like to start by saying that, in a very personal taste, I liked Ringu much better than this one. The only thing to receive applause in The ring are, without a doubt, the photography and the make-up. Anything else is poorly done: the story, the way to unfold it, the overdose of go-seek-a-scare scenes and the need to explain things at the end of it (which, by the way, wasn't that clear). Sure, Hollywood did a great job in matters of visual but, in a real content of the movie, which goes from the adaptation of the cursed video to it's plot development, it failed big time. I'm not one against the US remakes. I enjoyed The magnificent seven (from Sturges) as much as I did The seven samurai (from Kurosawa), but, let's face it, Hollywood also has stroke several times on adapting real art foreign films like The wings of desire (from Wenders) as to make a crap film named City of angels. My belief is, The ring, falls on this last category.
In terms of pacing I would recommend watching Ringu first instead of The ring, for anyone interested in seeing both. The japanese is slower but sure is better constructed and explained. My biggest complaint about The ring is that this one traded the whole creepy, evil and an air full of a perverse presence atmosphere from the original (and it's sounds), for more expensive special effects and a more sped up rhythm. This changed the whole aura of creepiness for the urge of an immediate disturbance. Sure, I got really scared a couple of times, by being caught with the guard down may I say, but they were moments frightening enough to give me those chilly goose bumps -the best one occurres near the beginning-; but that was it. Nothing else captivated or demanded my attention. It appears to me that Hollywood wanted an attractive package to sell rather than one good film that could be really apreciated by moviegoers with a brain inside their heads.
Also, the changes and additions in this film are more than evident. Despite being almost a carbon copy in it's first hour, The ring falls short on it´s task to get you IN the movie starting from the cursed video, that works better as a resemblence of the surrealistic and goofy movie Un perro andaluz (made by Luis Buñuel and Salvador Dalí in the late 20's), than the images that comes from a distressed mind (which actually are). Sure Ringu is slower, but besides the lot of talking involved there's also a strange, weird feeling in the air; it´s something like an evil presence that you can guess and watch in some secuences, and verbinski wasn't capable of capture that in here. That´s way I like Ringu, and that´s why I also recommend it instead of The Ring.