Original Post Date: 02.11.18
The year was 2002 and I was on vacation with high school friends, just a bunch of us kids very far away from home experiencing life for the first time. Total freedom. I am not going to bore Me with details I already know but let’s just say the events that took place stayed with me for a long time.
Back then, I had a strong relationship with horror but not like nowadays, oh no sir, nothing like nowadays *insert evil laugh here*, yet, I was not prepared for the fantastical experience we were about to have when we all decided to go to the local movie theater of the small town we were visiting to watch EL ARO (THE RING). My friends were as vanilla as they come (sorry guys) so the mere thought of them wanting to watch a weird horror movie was shocking to me and I welcomed it with open arms. I remember many things from that night but two things were particularly special: The big jump scare of the film and the whole theater reacting to it (so many screams, so many nervous laughs, so good!), and our sleeping arrangements for the evening where all seven of us spent it in one single room next to a washroom (I know, a damn washroom) which started making noises, water noises, as we were trying to fall asleep (so creepy, so perfectly timed, so good!).
By the way, this was the big jump scare scene I mentioned (wait for it):
Right, so that was 2002. Fast forward to most recent years and THE RING stills stands as one of my top-twenty favorite films from my horror collection. Fast forward to a month ago when I read for the first time the 1991 novel “Ring” by Koji Suzuki which inspired not only THE RING but its original Japanese predecessor, RINGU (1998). Did I mention that our American version was not the original but a remake?
The book was such a treat to read. The characters were so imperfect and human and I fell in love with them immediately, especially with Ryuji. Asakawa was cool and all but Ryuji was my main man! He was smart, perverted (allegedly, no one could prove it either way), fearless, funny, incredibly resourceful, and a true survivor until [spoiler alert] he died by the hand of Sadako. Sadako by the way was a young powerful woman when she ended her life (allegedly by forcing her rapist/killer with her super-charged ESP powers into pushing her into the water well located by the TB Sanatorium in the woods, which decades later became the infamous cabin in the woods where the VHS video was found, which OMG the video turned out to be Sadako’s projected memories [the screen going black was her eyelids, blinking!] along with disturbing random images), she ended her life due to loneliness and shame for not being able to be a mother (she was a hermaphrodite thus not being able to conceive), but little did she know that her “kids” one day would turn out to be the killer video tapes, video tapes which had to be copied to save the life of the unlucky one who happened to watch it; the seven-day curse was like a virus that could only be stopped by creating more, reproducing like a virus, stopping by not stopping, brilliant!
“Asakawa! Wasn’t your deadline 10:04? Rejoice! It’s 10:10! Asakawa, can you hear me? You’re still alive, right? The curse is broken. We’re saved. Hey, Asakawa! If you die down there you’ll end up just like her. If you die, just don’t put a curse on me, okay? If you’re going to die, die nice, would you? Hey Asakawa! If you’re alive, answer me, dammit!” – Ryuji (Excerpt from “Ring” by Koji Suzuki)
So yeah, the American remake movie as well as the book were both a hit for me, but what about the Japanese original movie? Well…
Sorry to say this but I fell asleep in the middle of it. Wait. What!? Why!? Easy answer: The movie felt too rushed and easy (the main characters did not struggle at all in putting together the pieces of the puzzle, unlike the book), and since I found out—sadly—from the first scene that this Japanese version was going to be an almost exact mirror from my beloved American version (or if we want to be a dick about it, that the American version was in the end an almost exact mirror from the Japanese original version), well, I pretty much knew what was going to happen play by play before it happened. Not to say that it was a bad movie, not at all, on the contrary, the Japanese movie did a great job at adapting the book and putting on screen ideas and concepts from the renowned horror author Koji Suzuki, I mean, come on, the movie was such a hit that we had to remake it.
Now, I would like to end this post by showing you screenshots of my favorite scenes from the Japanese movie, scenes that were both pivotal to the story and visually pleasant:
Final thought: if you have never read the book or watched either movie but want to, I would strongly suggest you first watch the Japanese version, followed by the American version, and until then start reading the book –by doing this you would increase the Wow Factor from the whole Ring experience, in my humble option that is.
Now, if someone could make a faithful play-by-word movie based 100% on the book, that’d be great.
- Marath