While most horror remakes are lesser versions of the original film, The Ring surpasses the original in a lot of ways and overall its a far better produced movie than its predecessor. The acting is definitely superior and the infamous tape is actually more disturbing in the american remake. It's rare for an american remake to be visually more disturbing as J-Horror when done well can be pretty damn creepy, I suppose for me, I just never took to the original Ringu all that much, where as i grew up with the remake, maybe that has something to do with it as well.
The Ring owes a huge amount of its success to casting Naomi Watts in the lead role, having such a solid actress grounds the movie and elevates it over what could be very easily a cheap b-movie. It focuses in on the mystery/thriller aspects of the story and her characters plight to save not just her own life but the life of her son who accidentally comes across the tape.
I think its restrained when it needs to be and when it does rely on music to emphasize a scary moment it doesn't overdo it and because of this it never becomes tiresome. Its use of music is effective and brief.
Overall I enjoy this movie quite a bit
and i think its the best of The Ring series by far.
The Ring 2 is more of the same, its a direct continuation to the original and for the most part is solid sequel but it does have some issues. The plot doesn't make much sense when you stop and think about it.
So in the original, Naomi Watts's character and her son survive as she makes a copy of the tape, in the sequel someone gets hold of the tape and dies and word of this travels back to Naomi Watts who then visits the crime-scene and Samara decides to continue to stalk her and her son, this time focusing on possessing her child. Now, why?, why does any of this happen?
Why does Naomi Watts decide to travel to the crime-scene, out of guilt perhaps, ok, but why does her being present at the scene suddenly make it that Samara can change her M.O and start just flat out possessing people, wouldn't that make the whole watching the tape malarky a bit pointless?. So, you can only kill people within seven days and your ghost is bound to a tape but if you feel like it you can also think "fuck this, i'm going to possess people instead".
that makes no sense.
Anyway with that out of the way, the actual film isn't bad, it's watchable, it's a decent continuation from the original even if it requires a few leaps in logic to get the plot moving.
Its fine but the original is better by miles,
also that movie doesn't feature a silly CGI deer.
Rings is utterly boring,
it has two good ideas but one it does away with early on and the other it does nothing with at all.
The opening to Rings feels like it belongs in a different movie, its actually incredibly decent, its over the top and ridiculous but it was fun and had an original idea to it. If Samara can come through screens, is it possible that she could appear on a plane?. Pretty ridiculous but fun.
Everything else though is utterly fucking boring, its all a retread of the first film except with bad acting and bland characters and it was so awful in fact that i turned with off with thirty minutes to go, that's how little i cared about this film.
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