Ringu VS The Ring

Understanding the origins of a film is life or death in these classic tellings of a cursed videotape. But, the same could be said for real life...

Many Americans claim to be fans of the popular The Ring, but have no knowledge of its Japanese founding.

To truly grasp the the full story, it's important for us, as movie enthusiasts, to establish a well-rounded view of the stories we love. It's important to understand how things came to be the way they are, because that understanding - or lack thereof - has the power to shape future cultural perceptions.

TL;DR - The Ring is the American adaptation of the Japanese film Ringu. How the two films differ perpetuates toxic American ideals and practices within the film industry. Don't watch American remakes of foreign films.

Director: Hideo Nakata

Year: 1998

Genre: Mystery, Horror

Summary: When her niece is found dead along with three friends after viewing a supposedly cursed videotape, reporter Reiko Asakawa sets out to investigate with her ex-husband, Ryuji.

4/5 Pineapples

Review:

Based on the novel of the same name by Koji Suzuki, Ringu begins in a Japanese teen's bedroom during a sleep over. Tomoko and her friend are exchanging ghost stories - the most current one being about a cursed videotape. Once you watch the tape, you get a phone call, and then you have seven days to live.

Tomoko confides in her friend about how she went to a cabin with a few others recently and watched a strange video. Tomoko tells her this is the seventh day since she watched the tape. Deciding to play it off as a joke, they laugh and continue on with their night playfully... until the fun gets cut short with the shrill ringing of the house phone.

The two head down the stairs to the main floor and into the kitchen to answer the phone. It's Tomoko's mother checking in. She assures her mother that everything is fine and ends the call. Her friend heads to the bathroom, but not before making Tomoko promise not to head back upstairs without her.

The TV switches on by itself, displaying nothing but static. Spooked, Tomoko turns the TV off and goes back to wait for her friend in the kitchen. But, the TV switches on again. And this time, all we see is Tomoko's reaction before she reaches her demise.

The next day a handful of kids are found dead, including Tomoko, with their faces and bodies twisted in unexplainable grimaces.

Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) is a reporter on the case of her niece's, Tomoko, and multiples teens' mysterious deaths. She's interviewing other teenagers and asking questions about the popular ghost story going around. They explain the cursed videotape, the phone call, and the seven days to live, which at this point in the story seems to be nothing more than an urban legend.

She attends the funeral reception at Tomoko's house with her son to give her condolences, but also to further investigate the story and any potential links between these deaths. When she finds that her son had wandered off into Tomoko's room, she discovers a receipt on Tomoko's desk displaying that Tomoko had film developed from her camera and it was ready to be picked up.

Asakawa develops the film and finds that there are pictures of Tomoko with a group of friends at a cabin, but some of the pictures of their faces are distorted in an unnatural way. She is able to make out what cabin the group was at when the photos were taken, and heads to the Izu campgrounds.

She's able to let herself into the cabin, but can't seem to find anything suspicious or out of place. Asakawa heads to the main office to ask if anyone noticed anything suspicious on the night that the teens stayed at the cabin. The man at the front desk was looking into his records when Asakawa spots a bookshelf behind the counter. The shelf contains movies available to borrow, but one of them is unlabelled. She asks about it, and the man behind the counter explains that someone must have left it behind. She asks to take it, and the man gives it to her willingly.

She takes the VHS tape back to the cabin and inserts it in the VHS player that's available there. Ominous scenes unfold of a woman looking into an oval mirror while brushing her hair, a girl in a white gown and long dark hair standing behind the woman in the mirror, water, a man whose face is concealed by a bag over his head pointing in an undisclosed direction, multiple people crawling, a woman's eye, scrambled words but then one clear one: "Eruption," and then, finally, a water well.

The tape cuts to static. She shuts the TV off. Trying to comprehend what she saw, the phone rings. She reluctantly answers, hoping it's just a coincidence. There's static and moaning on the other end. She slams the phone down, ejects the tape, and runs out of the cabin.

The next day, she invites over someone she's close with - who we come to find is her ex husband, Ryuji. Asakawa explains the tape, the call, and the seven day deadline. He is clearly skeptical, so she explains that four people have died in similar but separate instances on the same exact day.

She hands him a polaroid camera and tells him to take a picture. He snaps the picture, and analyzes the photo. Asakawa's face is blurred and twisted the same as Tomoko's and her friends' faces were in their pictures together at the cabin. She explains to him that she believes she's cursed.

With the picture being enough to leave Ryuji at least a little bit convinced, he watches the tape, and then he waits a beat... but, no phone call comes through.

Despite the lack in consistency, Ryuji asks Asakawa for a copy of the tape so he can do his own research. Meanwhile, Asakawa does her best to track down the origins of this videotape at her office - all to no avail. It wasn't pirated, it was never broadcasted anywhere...

Asakawa meets up with Ryuji at his place to give him the copy she made for him and further dissect where this video could have come from and what it means.

They do their best to piece together the images and messages in the film, before taking it to Asakawa's workplace to watch the film in better definition. It's there that they are able to make out a word inside the image of a woman's eye.

"Sada."

Rewinding the tape and playing it back slower, they are also able to hear a hidden message, "Shoumon bakkari, boukon ga kuru zo."

Ryuji later discovers the meaning of the phrase is "If you keep playing in the water, the monster will come for you." And the dialect of the phrase is from Oshima, where an eruption occurred at Mt. Mihara.

The two of them continue to work together, scouring news articles about an eruption at Mt. Mihara with hopes that they might find a link to the videotape. At a library they find an article about a woman who predicted the eruption of Mt. Mihara...

With only three days left in her seven day deadline, Asakawa contacts a correspondent of the article.

She drops off her son at his grandfather's place, and stays the day with them - as it may be last time she gets with them both.

That night, she gets a call from Ryuji explaining that the correspondent she reached out to contacted them back. The correspondent explained that the woman in the video who is brushing her hair is the same woman who predicted the eruption of Mt. Mihara. Ryuji further explains that the woman's name was Yamamura Shizuko, and that she committed suicide 40 years ago by throwing herself into Mt. Mihara. Ryuji tells Asakawa that he is going to Oshima tomorrow to get more information.

That same night, as Asakawa lay beside her son, she is awoken by what sounds like her niece calling for her. She looks to the futon beside her and there is a female's body beside her - clearly, not her son's. She blinks again, and the futon is empty. She notices light coming from the television on the other side of the sliding doors that divide two rooms.

She flings the sliding doors apart to find her son watching the videotape of what looks like something crawling out of the well before it cuts to static. She shuts the TV off and asks her son why he brought the tape with them and why he was watching it.

He says that Tomoko made him do it.

The following day, Asakawa accompanies Ryuji on his trip to Oshima, knowing she has limited time left... She confides in Ryuji about what happened to their son the night before. She explained what he said about Tomoko. Ryuji understands their son's experience, and he admits that he also has the ability to sense and see spirits. Ryuji says he sensed something in the house the first day she invited him over to watch the tape, but he thought maybe it was just the story getting to him. Ryuji says that their son must share this special ability.

When the ship docks, there's a man waiting there for them. He drives them to an inn owned by the son and daughter-in-law of one of the Shizuko cousins. During the car ride, Ryuji explains the story further to Asakawa. He says that Yamamura killed herself after the press claimed her predictions were fraud. The media destroyed her, and she eventually lost her mind.

Yamamura's predictions caught the attention of a scholar, Ikuma, who used her in a series of demonstrations to prove the existence of Extrasensory Perception (ESP). At first she is loved by the press... until they turned against her.

Supposedly Ikuma went missing years ago, and is assumed by Ryuji and Asakawa as dead. When Asakawa probes further into why the scholar would even be significant to the overall story, Ryuji explains that Ikuma has a daughter with Yamamura. Asakawa instantly remembers the scene from the tape of the girl in a white dress with long dark hair.

Once at the inn, they both recognize a room with a mirror hanging on the wall. The oval mirror from the tape.

The owner, old man Yamamura, refuses to cooperate or answer any of the questions Ryuji and Asakawa have.

At dinner, Asakawa has just about given up hope of surviving her seven days, when one of the innkeepers let's herself into the dining area with news about Miss Shizuko. She explains that "this is all that there is," holding a picture of the scholarly professor and Yamamura Shizuko.

The following morning Asakawa and Ryuji find old man Yamamura on the beach. He warns it'd be best if they leave soon because the sea will probably be harsh that evening.

Ryuji presses for answers, "What kind of a child was Shizuko?"

"Shizuko was... different. She’d come out here by herself ever’day an’ just stare out at the ocean. The fishermen all took a dislikin’ to her. Ocean’s an unlucky place for us. Y’see, every year it swallows up more of our own. You keep starin’ out at somethin’ like that..."

Ryuji recites the old phrase he found, "Shoumon bakkari shite’ru to, boukon ga kuru zo. If you keep playing in the water, the monster will come for you.” Mr. Yamamura looks at Ryuji, surprised. Ryuji continued, "Shizuko could see inside people, couldn’t she? Down to the places they’d most like to keep hidden. It must have been difficult for her"...

Yamamura gets upset and attempts to walk off. Ryuji presses, accusing the father of being the one who spread the word about Shizuko's abilities and contacted the professor. He accuses the father of wanting to make money off of his daughter. Getting little response, Ryuji then asks about Shizuko's daughter.

Mr. Yamamura falls and Ryuji reaches out to grab him. When his hand makes contact with the old man, he is suddenly able to see inside Mr. Yamamura's mind. He sees a memory of Shizuko on stage during a presentation, the audience lashing out at her.

Asakawa runs over to the two men, and lays her hand on Ryuji, suddenly able to see what he is seeing as well.

In the memory, one of the audience members points at Shizuko accusingly and falls to the floor, writhing in pain until his breathing stops. Shizuko looks back stage, her eyes wide.

"Sadako? Was it you?" she asks.

Ryuji, awake from the memory now, asks Mr. Yamamura, "Sadako killed him? She can kill just with a thought?"

Mr. Yamamura answers, "She's... a devil spawn."

Asakawa, still in the memory, sees Sadako hiding behind her long dark hair as she attempts to flee the scene. In the vision, Asakawa reaches out to the little girl. Sadako grabs Asakawa's wrist, and when Asakawa awakens from the memory, the bruises left by Sadako's grip remain.

Asakawa calls a coworker explaining that after Shizuko committed suicide, the professor took Sadako and ran. The professor would be dead by now but Sadako would be in her forties. She frantically tells her coworker to find whatever information they can on what happened to the two of them.

When she hangs up the phone, Ryuji suggests that Sadako is probably already dead. To which Asakawa asks, "Then who made [the video]?" Ryuji explains that he believes the video isn't something anyone made, but rather a manifestation of Sadako's pure hatred.

The storm outside has gotten worse, and Ryuji and Asakawa are told there's no way they are going be able to get a boat to take them home tonight.

While Ryuji attempts to persuade sailors to let them aboard their boat, Asakawa gets a call back from her coworker, admitting that they were unable to find anything on the whereabouts of Sadako. She's temporarily without hope before she remembers that it's not just her life at stake, but also her sons (since he has also seen the tape).

Asakawa puts together that when they watched the tape at her house, the phone never rang. But when she had watched it at the cabin, the phone did ring. She tells Ryuji that the professor must have taken Sadako to the cabin.

After struggling to find anyone to take them back across the water, Mr. Yamamura offers to take them aboard his boat.

While aboard, amongst the rocky seas, Ryuji and Asakawa discuss how Sadako must have died at Izu before the cabins were ever built. They speculate how Ikuma and Shizuko's relationship was already such a scandal that it ultimately resulted in him being kicked out of his university. And after Shizuko's unfortunate passing, he was determined to keep their child a secret. They agree that by finding Sadako's body, they may be able to lift the curse on the both of them and their son.

They land in Izu around dawn with one day left to find Sadako's body.

Before exiting the boat, Ryuji attempts to lift spirits with Yamamura by saying, "We made it [through the storm]!" This triggers a memory for Mr. Yamamura. He pauses a moment before commenting, "Shizuko... She used to speak to the ocean, just ramble away. One time I hid, listening to one of her conversations... It weren't in no human language."

On shore they collect supplies: a crowbar, a shovel, rope, and two buckets. Asakawa makes one last call to her son, knowing it may be her last. She tells him she'll be home soon and that she loves him. Asakawa and Ryuji pack their things in a rental car, but before heading to the cabins, Ryuji asks, "What time was it when you first watched the video?" She answered, "no more than 10 minutes passed 7 P.M." They conclude that if the rumors are true, then 7 P.M. is their deadline for surviving the evening.

They arrive at the cabin where Asakawa first watched the video and received the phone call. Ryuji uses his crowbar to loosen the lattice surrounding the lower portion of the cabin enough for the both of them to climb over it. This puts them directly below the floor of the cabin living room.

Asakawa's suspicions are confirmed when she finds a sealed off well. The cabin had been built directly over top of it.

Ryuji and Asakawa place their hands on the well and are able to see another flashback of Sadako's life. In the vision, they see her and her long dark hair, peering curiously down an open well. From behind the girl comes a man in a tweed suit. He strikes Sadako over the head. She falls to her knees, and that's when he hoists her over the edge and into the well. He looks around to ensure his crime went unwitnessed, then peers down the well. It's there that we see the shot from Sadako's perspective, peering up from the bottom of the well at the man. We recognize the man's face as Ikuma's.

Once awoken from the memory, Ryuji speculates that it was Ikuma who put the lid on the well - with Sadako still inside.

Together they are able to push the stone lid off of the well. With the rope tied to a load-bearing pillar and around Ryuji's waist, he's able to hoist himself down the well carefully, all the while taking in his surroundings. Up the walls of the well are fingernails and streaks of blood. Ryuji describes the scene to Asakawa, who is waiting above. He tells her how Sadako must have still been alive after she was thrown in. She tried to climb herself out.

Once at the bottom, Ryuji is about chest deep in well water. He calls out to Asakawa to lower the buckets, and together they rotate two buckets between them, scooping the water, hoisting it up, dumping it outside of the well, lowering it again, hoisting the other, dumping it out and lowering it again. After many rotations, Asakawa grows weak. At nearly 6 P.M., she passes out from exhaustion, nearly hitting Ryuji at the bottom of the well with a full bucket of water. Realizing something is wrong, Ryuji climbs himself back out of the well with the help of his rope. He and Asakawa switch places, Ryuji now doing the hoisting and Asakawa scooping the water. As the water shallows, Asakawa searches for Sadako's body.

Asakawa is blindly fumbling through the murky well water, whispering to Sadako "Where are you?," when suddenly a pale arm reaches out from beneath the water to catch Asakawa's wrist. A figure begins to emerge, a girl, whose wet hair is covering all of her facial features. Asakawa isn't frightened, but empathetic. She strokes the girls hair...

A stroke of her hair pulls the skin clean-off of Sadako's skull. But instead of screaming or being terrified, Asakawa begins to cry and chooses to hold Sadako's skeleton to herself like a mother comforting a scared child.

Ryuji calls down, "Asakawa! It's already 10 minutes past 7! We did it!"

Next we see Ryuji and Asakawa out of the well with cops investigating the scene. Ryuji and Asakawa are wrapped in blankets, sitting on the curb, still trying to wrap their heads around everything that has happened. She asks Ryuji why Ikuma would kill his own daughter. Ryuji questions that maybe Sadako wasn't his daughter after all. Maybe her father wasn't even human.

Asakawa ponders this, and looking down, she notices the bruises that were left on her wrist from the other day on the beach are now gone.

The following morning, Asakawa is sitting in her bedroom, dazed. She's presumably humbled to be alive and content the curse is lifted.

The same morning, Ryuji sits at his desk, catching up on work. Suddenly the TV switches on... Unwilling to admit it to himself, he hesitates to turn around. Slowly turning toward the TV, Ryuji is met with the last scene of the videotape. It's the shot of the well. Ryuji falls to his knees. In disbelief, he crawls toward the TV screen. His face to the screen, he sees a hand reach out of the well, then another. An oily, dark head of hair rises over the well. Sadako, in her grimy white dress, lifts herself out of the well and begins approaching the screen.

The phone rings. Ryuji, panicked, looks between the phone and the television before scrambling to the phone. All he can do is clutch the phone fearfully as he looks back to see that Sadako has made it so close, that her head is taking up the entirety of the screen. The television makes static noises as Sadako emerges from the television screen. Crawling on all fours, her broken fingernails and bloody fingertips pulling herself across his floor toward him. She begins to rise to her feet, her joints moving in unnaturally.

Ryuji fumbles around the apartment, attempting to hide, but Sadako's gaze finds him. Beneath her curtain of black hair, we can see her eye, blazing with hatred.

The last we see of Ryuji is his face, twisting in a grimace.

It was Asakawa who called him, and she can still hear the sound from the cursed videotape playing on the other end. She speeds over to Ryuji's place, only to be met with a cop who explains that they have already removed "the body."

Back at Asakawa's apartment, she attempts to understand why she was spared and Ryuji was not. Sitting on her couch, resigned, she glances at her television. An unnatural glare (or orb) catches her attention, and she feels she's no longer alone in her living room. It's Ryuji's spirit, with a cloth bag draped over his face, pointing at her purse. In her bag, she finds the copy of the tape that she had made for him. That's when she remembers... the only thing she did differently from Ryuji was that she made a copy of the tape and showed the tape to someone else.

Next we have an arial view of Asakawa's car as she drives her son away. We can hear her on her cellphone with her father, "Dad, it's me. I'm on my way over. Look, dad, I've got something to ask. It's for [my son]..."

Asakawa's intention is now clear to us. She plans to share the video with her father to protect her son. We watch her drive in the direction of her father's house as the recording of her interview with the teenagers at the start of the movie describing the cursed videotape plays aloud.

"They say there’s a way you can stay alive after you watch the video. You’ve gotta make a copy of it and show it to somebody else inside a week." Another girl, "But what about the person you show it to?" The first answers, "Well, then they make a copy and show it to somebody else. Again, inside a week."

A third chimes in, laughing, "Then there’s no end to it." The first girl concludes, "That’s just it. There is no end. But if it meant not dying... you’d do it, wouldn’t you?"

Director: Gore Verbinski

Year: 2002

Genre: Mystery, Horror

Summary: A journalist must investigate a mysterious videotape which seems to cause the death of anyone who views it.

2/5 Pineapples

Review:

Gore Verbinski's re-telling of Ringu, known as The Ring, starts off in almost the same exact way as its elder. Two teenage girls are having a sleepover, but this time, they're unable to find anything to watch on TV. Katie is going on about how televisions distribute magnetic waves through the air that kills off brain cells. This turns into her friend excitedly sharing a scary story about a cursed videotape. Katie responds similarly to Tomoko in Ringu by telling her friend that she watched the video with her boyfriend and some friends, and that this is the seventh day since watching it. But, then of course, Katie starts laughing and accusing her friend of falling for her "joke" before the house phone rings.

Katie's house is set up similarly to Tomoko's. Katie and her friend head downstairs to the house phone, and discover it was Katie's mom calling to check in. Her friend goes to use the bathroom and Katie remains in the kitchen. Suddenly the TV kicks on, displaying nothing but static. Katie turns the TV off and turns back to the kitchen. The TV hisses with static again, to which Katie responds by yanking the TV's power cord out of the wall.

Realizing just how silent the house is, Katie starts calling for her friend. She ends up back upstairs. Her bedroom door is shut and water is leaking from inside, beginning to pool in the hall. She reaches for the doorknob, but once it's open, all we see is her face preparing for a scream that never happens.

A six-year-old boy, named Aidan, is sitting at his desk, coloring, presumably waiting to be picked up from school by his mother. We hear his mother, Rachel (Naomi Watts) on the phone with someone from her office. We gather that she is a busy, and aggressive, journalist.

When she enters the class room, Aidan announces that he's going to wait in the car. His teacher approaches Rachel to express concerns about Aidan's mental state. His teacher explains that she's aware Aidan just lost his cousin, Katie, whom he was close with, and she thinks that could have something to do with the disturbing images he's been drawing. The teacher shows Rachel a picture of what appears to be a girl buried underground. Rachel plays off this news by stating that this is how Aidan is choosing the process the death of his cousin who died only two nights ago. This concerns the teacher as she goes on to explain that Aidan has been drawing these pictures since last week.

Rachel and Aidan attend Katie's funeral reception. Katie's mother explains to Rachel how it doesn't make sense that Katie's heart stopped, given that she was young and healthy. Rachel's sister, Katie's mother, asks that Rachel look into what happened to Katie. She thinks that because Rachel is a writer, she may be able to help find more information on similar mysterious deaths.

On her way out of the reception, Rachel overhears teens discussing the "urban legend" of the cursed videotape. Rachel approached the group, asking more about the tape and if they know whether or not Katie watched it. When one of the teens in the group explains that Katie watched it with her boyfriend, Rachel asks where her boyfriend is. That's when she learns that the boyfriend is dead too and that Katie and her boyfriend died separately, but similarly, on the same night.

Later that night, or the following evening, Rachel stops by the video store to rent a movie for Aidan. She asks the clerk about a movie that supposedly kills you after seven days of watching it. He is familiar with the stories, but it's (obviously) not a movie they carry at any ol' Family Video.

That night, before bed, Aidan confides in his mom about how he worries they don't have "enough time" before they die. He explains that this was a concern Katie had too.

Once Rachel gets Aidan to sleep, she sorts through newspapers in the living room. She's able to find information on three teenagers who all died on the same night as Katie - and at the same time, 10 P.M.

Later that week, Rachel goes back to her sisters house to investigate Katie's room. She can't find any suspicious videotape, but she does look through a binder-like scrapbook that belonged to Katie. Inside the book are cut outs of models from magazine with their faces scribbled over in a vertical direction (one might say, like hair). Rachel ends up finding a receipt for pictures that Katie had gotten developed.

Rachel leaves her sister's place and immediately picks up Katie's developed photos. In the photos she finds seemingly normal pictures of Katie with her friends and boyfriend... until she sees one of all of them together, but with each face distorted unnaturally. In one of the photos, she can make out that the teens had stayed at the Shelter Mountain Inn & Resort.

Rachel drives to the resort. When she arrives, she goes to the front desk to ask the host if they noticed anything strange on the particular night that Katie and her friends rented the cabin. Despite the fact that he only seems interested in playing cards with her... he was able to recall what cabin they stayed in, that the teens didn't pay for their stay, and that they had a lot of complaints about the TV reception. He explains that the bad reception is the reason for their being VHS players in each cabin, and movies available to borrow. He gestures to a bookshelf of movies. Rachel tells him that she's tired from the drive and will rent out a cabin to nap before she gets back on the road. While he's in the back room behind the counter, swiping her card, she pockets a blank videotape that is sitting on the bookshelf with other rentable films.

After paying out the room, Rachel heads to the cabin and injects the blank tape into the VHS player.

What follows is almost entirely different from the Japanese version of the cursed tape.

There's a shot of what looks like an eclipse, the ocean with what appears to be a fly on the upper-right-hand corner of the screen, beached horses being washed up (or away) by waves, a ladder, a woman leaping from a cliff, insects, an inhuman-looking eye, an older woman brushing her hair in an oval mirror, and then there's a cut to the same mirror but from a different angle and this time there's a younger girl with dark hair over her face wearing a white gown standing in the reflection. Lastly, we have a shot of a water well in the woods before the video cuts to static.

Immediately following the end of the tape, the cabin phone rings. Rachel answers it, only to hear an unknown, ghostly voice warn, "Seven days."

The following morning, Rachel is back at her apartment. Aidan heads to school.

We see Aidan run into his father on his way to school - for some reason - and it's unexplainably awkward.

Rachel invites her ex-husband, Noah, over to her apartment for help explaining the videotape. We come to find he is something of a film professor. But, Rachel and Noah's relationship is nothing like that of Asakawa and Ryuji's (from Ringu). Instead, Rachel and Noah are argumentative, and following American-horror-film tradition, the man is very dismissive of the woman's worries and concerns.

Rachel attempts to show Noah the picture of Katie with her friends and their distorted faces. He sees the deformities and tries to explain away how that kind of edit could be made on a camera. She then insists that he take her picture. When he does, he says the blurred result must have something to do with the hard drive malfunctioning in her camera.

(Any photographers or videographers out there to vouch for Noah's explanation? Is that even a legitimate possibility or issue that real people experience?)

Losing patience for her behavior, Noah insists that Rachel get to the point of why she invited him in. Rachel tells him to watch the videotape that's in her VCR and then steps outside while he does.

While she's outside, the camera takes its time panning across the street from apartment living room to apartment living room, all of which have a TV on, with their owner's mindlessly viewing their screens.

When Noah is done he makes a joke about how "student film" the video seems, not taking her fear seriously at all.

Rachel is prepared for her house phone to ring, but it doesn't. Noah continues to dismiss her concerns by saying someone made a weird video and then spread a bunch of rumors as a prank. She further explains that 4 people who watched the film are dead. She asks Noah, if it's just a tape, then who made it?

Finally taking a moment to at least consider her concerns, he asks her to make him a copy so he can look into it further for her.

Rachel is making a copy of the video for Noah at her workplace when she notices a few strange things about the tape. The source numbers are sporadic and nonsensical. She also hovers on the shot of the ocean, with the fly in the right-hand corner. It looks so real... as if it landed on the TV screen in front of her. But, when she goes to touch it, she only touches the glass between her and the picture.

Noah has somehow already received the copy of the video when we see Rachel enter his apartment. He's staring at the VCR, and he asks if the source numbers were messed up on the original copy too. She says she noticed that too and that the same problem must have gotten copied over, but Noah explains that the sourcing numbers are created when something is recorded onto a VHS tape. Without correct source numbers, or a control track, the video shouldn't play. So, for neither tape to have sourcing numbers, that means that the images aren't recorded and never were...

Noah and Rachel are fighting over whether or not there is something else suspicious about the film when Noah's assistant walks into his apartment. Noah attempts to get the assistant to give her opinion on the video before Rachel interjects and insists she has somewhere to be, and takes the tape with her.

Things get personal when Noah chases Rachel down the hallway asking why she's taking the tape. She explains she doesn't want anyone else to watch it, to which Noah argues, "You had no problem showing it to me." Rachel defends herself, saying she did have a problem with him seeing it.

It's clear that the real issue is that Rachel takes the tape more seriously than Noah does. And there is a serious lack of respect for Rachel in this dynamic.

As Rachel exits the building, she's confronted with a wooden ladder - similar to the one in the videotape. There's a moment of recognition before a painter tells Rachel that's it's bad luck to walk underneath a ladder.

(I have no idea why a painter would be on the side of a city building with a wooden ladder, over an industrial ladder, but I digress.)

The next scene that we're met with is inside an institution. There's a nurse, rolling a curtain on wheels down a hall. We see that there's a girl being shielded behind the curtain, and soon discover it's Katie's friend. The curtain is used to shield TVs from her view on her way from one place to another within the facility.

Rachel meets with Katie's friend, Becca, to gather more information on what happened the night Katie died. The nurse tells Rachel that Becca hasn't spoken since the incident. But after just a few attempts, and Rachel putting her hand on Becca's, Becca tells Rachel...

"She will show you."

Rachel attempts to ask who will show her what, but Becca's eyes roll back and the last thing Rachel gets out of her is "Four days," a reminder of how many days Rachel has left.

At work, Rachel confides in her Edit Technician on how to operate their recording equipment. Once Rachel has the general idea of how things work, she requests to be alone. She plays through the tape, printing out screen shots as she goes. She turns the dial as far as it will go on the machine in an effort to see beyond the edge of the frame. She's able to make out a lighthouse, and prints off a picture of it. She pauses at the scene of the beach with the odd fly in the corner. She reaches up again to poke at it, but this time she plucks a real fly from the screen, physically pulling it out of the film itself.

As Noah is buying groceries, he catches his reflection in a security camera, and it's then that he realizes he has the same blurred and distorted face that Rachel and Katie had in their pictures.

Meanwhile, Rachel is at a public library sifting through records to research where this lighthouse that she found in the videotape could be located. She finds a place called Vinalhaven Island.

Putting the images displayed in the video together in her mind, she decides to search "Vinalhaven Island horses." She's met with an immense amount of information on horses that were getting sick and dying on the island from an unknown disease. The illness seemed to stem from horses bred at Morgan Ranch. Even stranger, an article headline displays "Horses Recovering After Breeder's Suicide."

All in all, Rachel finds that a woman named Anna Morgan (the woman brushing her hair in the mirror in the videotape), who was a horse breeder on Vinalhaven, had several horses get sick and die (like the dead horses we see on shore in the video) and she eventually killed herself by jumping off a cliff (as we are shown in the videotape as well).

Things are starting to make sense.

Rachel is so engrossed in her research and note-taking at this point, that she doesn't even realize that she is scribbling over a print out of Anna Morgan's face with a pen... as if there was long black hair covering her face.

Later that night, Rachel awakens to the sound of a TV from a nightmare of a girl with no fingernails grabbing her wrist. She goes to Aidan's room to find he's not there, and then finds him in the living room watching the videotape.

She quickly turns off the TV, wraps her arms around Aidan and begs to understand why he watched it. The phone rings, and she answers in a plea, "Leave him alone!"

But, it's Noah. He called to tell her that he believes her. What changed? Hard to say, seeing as it wasn't addressed.

All Rachel can muster out is, "[Our son] watched the tape."

This is the first time we learn that Aidan is Noah's son.

Cut to the next scene where Rachel is asking her sister to watch Aidan... While she's there, Rachel looks through Katie's room for more clues. She finds the notebook with celebrity faces scribbled out again - this time the scribbles have more meaning. She finds notes with ladders drawn in the margin and doodles of flies. There are pictures of dead horses, a camera facing a chair, a burning tree, and a ring circled over and over so many times that the page tore. After that, the notebook is blank on every page.

Noah and Aidan wait in the car for Rachel and have an awkward "I'm your dad" conversation. Aidan draws a picture for Rachel while he waits.

Aidan gives Rachel the picture, then Noah and Rachel leave him with his aunt.

In the car, Rachel explains to Noah everything she knows about Anna, which was essentially that Anna was depressed and seeing doctors at a hospital.

Noah and Rachel decide to split up. Rachel goes to Vinalhaven Island and Noah goes to the hospital Anna was admitted to. They promise to each other that their time and their sons time won't run out. They promise to figure out this curse together.

So, now Rachel is on a ship to Vinalhaven. And there's a pretty pointless scenario where Rachel comes across a horse in a trailer on the ship. Her presence unsettles it for whatever reason, and the horse kicks himself out of the trailer. The horse is in such a frenzy that it sprints forward, past the forming crowd, and launches itself over the ship railing into the water. Rachel runs to the edge to see the horse fighting for its life, then she runs to the stern of the ship to watch it get caught in the propellers. The water erupts red.

As Rachel is leaving the boat once it has docked, she overhears one of the ferry workers exclaim that they haven't seen a horse react like that since the horse illness that occurred on the island years before.

Next, we find Noah at the psychiatric clinic that Anna Morgan attended while she was alive. He's at the front desk requesting Anna Morgan's file... as if that would ever work.

So, of course, Noah has to break into the lower level where the older files are stored to locate Anna's psychiatric information.

While Noah searches, we're brought back to Rachel who is in front of a farmhouse. The mailbox specifies it's the "Morgan" residence. She walks up to the front porch, taking note that there are no horses on the farm. She knocks on the door and isn't getting an answer. She follows the sound of something being hammered around the back of the house to find Mr. Morgan repairing a fence.

She introduces herself as a writer, but he knows what she's looking for and isn't very enthusiastic about speaking on the subject. Despite that, he agrees to give her a few minutes of his time. They walk back to the house and he allows her inside.

Rachel starts by asking Mr. Morgan about the horses that "went strange." But there doesn't seem to be more information on that than what she already knew. Some got sick, some drown themselves. She asks why there aren't any in his stables. He tells her that he doesn't breed horses anymore. He admits it was Anna's passion to breed horses, not his. When Rachel turns the focus of conversation onto Anna, Mr. Morgan grows increasingly uncomfortable. He's weaving her away and going on about his day throughout his house, giving her only short responses. That's when Rachel sees the oval mirror. The same oval mirror in the videotape that (Rachel nows knows to be) Anna is looking through.

That's when Rachel pulls out the videotape from her purse and confronts Mr. Morgan. "Do you know anything about this?"

Mr. Morgan seems troubled by her tone, but shakes his head. She goes on to explain that she believes that the dead leave messages for the living and that this tape is a message from his wife. She tells him that Anna is on the tape in the very room they're in, and so is the lighthouse and her horses.

He asks her if that is the only tape, to which Rachel admits there is another.

Mr. Morgan is determined to leave the room, shut the door, and get back to his work around the farm, all the while refusing to take her tape.

Rachel gets back in her car and is headed back down the road when she stops to look back. She pulls out the drawing Aidan gave to her before she left. It's of the Morgan house.

Rachel calls her son on a payphone to question him about why he drew the house.

Why not a cell phone? I truly don't know.

Aidan tells her that a girl told him to draw it.

When Rachel hangs up the payphone, she asks a man and woman pasing by if they knew the Morgan's daughter. The man expresses he's uneasy to discuss her because he's convinced that the moment the Morgan's adopted their daughter, there was no longer any fish for the fishermen to catch. He and the woman further explain that Anna had tried for a long time to have a baby and never could. She and Mr. Morgan went away for a year and came back with a baby. But their child, Samara, wasn't normal. She wouldn't talk to anyone or even smile.

Rachel asked what happened to Samara, and the woman said that the Morgan's sent her away to a psychiatric hospital and that she was under the impression Samara was still there. She said that was around the same time Anna killed herself.

Instead of catching the last ferry back to the city, Rachel decides to stay on the island.

Noah, still in the file room of the hospital, has finally spotted a file under the name Anna Morgan. He leafs through the documents that essentially state the woman suffered from anxiety and depression and had numerous miscarriages throughout her life. Inside the file, her finds some radiographs. One of them depicts a burning tree and is labeled "Samara Morgan."

Oh, it's fun to mention that for some reason, some of the information in Anna's file was in Japanese... a nonsensical and feeble shout out to Ringu, I guess?

He rummages through the file cabinet further and finds only an empty file behind Anna's. But, scrawled on the back of the file, it reads "Session Terminated 9/21/78 at Father's Request -- See Video Record # SM015."

Noah lies to a nurse about being Samara's father in order to get a room to watch the video record. But when he requests the tape from staff, the container is empty. Noah discovers that the last person to have watched the tape was Mr. Morgan. Meaning: Mr. Morgan kept and still has a tape of Samara.

Rachel is back at the Morgan residence, but it's later in the evening now. She let's herself into the Morgan home.

Meanwhile, Noah is on a ferry headed to the island, but he's unable to make calls to Rachel's phone while on the ship.

Rachel finds the room with the oval mirror again.

In this shot, we see a Japanese piece of artwork framed on the wall.

The appreciation and respect for the original story is really just bursting at the seams here... Thanks, America.

Rachel notices a TV is humming on the floor, among cardboard boxes - as if it was only just recently unpacked. The TV is on, and inside the cardboard boxes are tapes labeled: "The Truth About Telekinesis" and "Collected Studies of Mentalism." Rachel hits the eject button to see what is currently in the VCR, and the tape that appears is labeled # SM015.

She watches the video recording of a little girl sitting in a white room, her dark hair hanging in front of her face. From behind the camera, we hear a man ask Samara how she made specific pictures. We see him hold them in front of her and in front of the camera. They're the radiographs Noah came across earlier. He asks her if she can control when she makes these pictures, and she shakes her head. The doctor goes on to say that there are some people that believe if someone concentrates hard enough then they are able to make other people see what they want them to see. He says to Samara that this is why she is here. Her parents want her to stop making them see things. The doctor tells Samara that he doesn't want her to stop, rather that he wants to listen to her. He says that sometimes parents don't know how to listen, so children find other ways to communicate. He asks Samara what she's scared of.

Mr. Morgan is revealed to be standing over Rachel as she watches, unaware of his presence. He's holding pliers and coiled wire.

Rachel doesn't get to Samara's answer before she hears creaks throughout the house. She shuts the TV off and looks out the window to find that Mr. Morgan has returned. She notices wet footsteps going up the stairs and follows them, clutching a walking stick as a weapon. She follows the wet footsteps into a bathroom. Before she can enter, Mr. Morgan steps in front of her holding a metal bit and bridle.

Rachel musters up the courage to confront him, "Where's your child?" No answer. She asks again. He answers, "Stop calling her a child."

"They said you sent here away. You never sent her anywhere did you?"

Mr. Morgan explains, "When you can't have a child, it's for a reason."

Rachel analyzes that Samara must have had talent and that talent scared her father. She believe that Samara is hurting people because she had been hurt. Rachel accuses Mr. Morgan of being the one who did so.

Mr. Morgan is going on about how Samara will keeping hurting people, she won't stop, and she'll continue to get stronger. He says that Samara sent Rachel to him to remind him there is no point in keeping secrets anymore... Those are his last words before stepping into the flooded bathroom. The floors are littered with extension cords plugged in and crisscrossing all over the floor. He kneels in the overflowing tub, puts the metal bit in his mouth, then hits the power button on one of the power strips.

At this moment Noah enters the house. Rachel tries to tell Noah about Samara, but he tells her that he knows, based on the files he found at the hospital. She tells him, "I think he killed her."

Together they investigate the house, trying to find anything that might explain what happened to Samara. Finding nothing, they're drawn to barn outside of the Morgan house.

Inside the barn, they find empty stables... and a long red ladder. From the ground, they can see a loft above their heads, so they use the ladder to climb up. In the loft, they find what appears to be a child's room.

"The mother was going crazy. Morgan blamed the child, so they kept her here. Alone."

Looking around, it dawns on Rachel that Noah never got a phone call at her apartment. She only received a phone call at the cabin. She also points out that she has seen the tree that is drawn on the wall of the kid's room. It matches a tree that Rachel noticed when she was last at the cabin.

Rachel and Noah head back to the cabins. The cabins were built some time after Samara went missing. Inside the cabin where Rachel first watched the tape, Noah is looking through the guest book. While they search, the same tree in Samara's drawings is the tree that's swaying outside the cabin window.

Rachel tells Noah she remembers the sun shining through the tree at sunset when she first watched the tape.

Down to the last few hours before the curse takes Rachel's life, Noah promises she doesn't have until sunset, she has until forever.

Cute.

Frustrated that they were lead to the cabin, with nowhere else to go or search next, Noah pulls the phone cord out of the wall and then pushes the tv over. It crashes to the ground. He kicks the tv into a side table, knocking over a marble-filled vase. The marbles roll out unnaturally to the direct center of the cabin floor.

Noah lifts the rug away to reveal a ring of discolored, curved in, dampness in the wood floor.

Noah retrieves an axe from beside a hose in the the main office. He used it to break through the wood flooring of the cabin, revealing a sealed well underneath.

Noah and Rachel climb down to the well and push open the concrete covering. Thousands of flies swarm out of the well.

Rachel is looking down inside the well, gauging the depth, when the TV in the living room of the cabin slides down the depressed floorboards, knocking Rachel into the well.

She lands unscathed, and attempts to find her barings. She notices claw marks along the stone walls. She tells Noah that Samara must have been alive when she was dumped into the well, and had tried to climb her way out.

Rachel is treading through the water when her hand catches a mass of black hair. A hand in a white dress shoots up from the depths of the water below, grabbing Rachel's wrist.

Suddenly Rachel can see the forest before the cabin was built, the tree outside, horses in a meadow, and Samara looking down the well. Anna Morgan approaches Samara from behind, smothering her face with a black plastic bag, and then pushes her into the well.

The mass of black hair in Rachel's hand is still attached to Samara who floats to the surface. As Rachel moves the hair out of Samara's face, the skin peels completely off the skull, leaving a skeleton behind in Rachel's arms.

Noah yells down to Rachel, "It's sunset! It's past sunset!"

The cops are called and Noah and Rachel reflect on what is now a crime scene. Anna couldn't live with what she had done, so the Mr. Morgan kept everything a secret. Rachel suspects that Samara was alive in the well for seven days, hence the curse allowing you only seven days to live.

With their relationship closer now, Noah and Rachel exchange heartfelt fair wells to each other, truly believing that the worst is over.

The following morning, Rachel is cuddling up with her son, Aidan. He asks if the girl is dead. Rachel explains that the girl was alone for a long time and that made her sad and angry, but she's not alone anymore because now everyone knows her story.

Aidan gets upset about this, demanding to know why the girl isn't alone anymore. When Rachel explains it's because they helped her, he gets angry. He doesn't understand why they helped her. Rachel tries to explain that Samara is sleeping now, just like his cousin Katie. They're peacefully asleep.

"But mom, Samara doesn't sleep."

At Noah's loft, Noah is listening to a message left on his answering machine when the TV pops on, displaying static. Noah gets up to turn off the TV, but as he's walking away, it turns itself on again.

Rachel is attempting to call Noah, but Noah ignores his ringing phone to turn the TV off a second time. He turns to finally answer his phone when the TV turns on for the third time. But this time, it doesn't turn on to just white noise. This time, the TV displays Samara's well.

Rachel is in her car, speeding in the direction of Noah's loft.

On the TV, hands shoot out from inside the well, grasping the edge, and pulling Samara's body up. She crawls out of the well and towards the camera. She closes in, completely engulfing the frame of the TV, before water leaks out of the television and Samara crawls out of it.

Crawling toward Noah now, dragging herself across his floor with her nail-less fingers, Noah pushes a chair into her path, and a shelf of equipment. She climbs over each and rises to a full vertical stance before lunging at Noah. The scene cuts to black.

In the elevator of Noah's building now, Rachel throws open the elevator gates, as she heads down the hall towards Noah's front door. Water is leaking out from inside. She lets herself inside to find that the loft is flooded, with furniture overturned and the TV playing static. Rachel approaches a chair facing away from her. When she turns the chair around, we see her despair and immediately know it's Noah's lifeless body sitting in it.

As Rachel retreats to the elevator, she asks herself what she did that Noah didn't do.

Back at home, Rachel is rummaging through her things, trying to understand why she was spared over Noah. Aidan comes out to ask what's wrong, but Rachel tells him to go into his room and lock the door. Her tone scares him, and he follows her orders.

She finds the tape labeled "Copy" lost and forgotten under her sofa. She realizes in that moment that Samara didn't want to be heard or helped, she wanted her curse to be spread. Rachel made a copy of the tape and she made someone else watch it. That's the only way to survive your seven-day demise.

Next, we see Rachel in her office with her son. Grabbing and directing his hand to create a copy of the tape.

We see Rachel and Aidan driving away. Aidan asks what happens to the next person who watches the tape. Rachel remains silent.

Comparison:

Less is more.

Ringu paved the foundation for a classic, spine tingling ghost story where the dialogue didn't have to do all of the story telling.

In 96 minutes, our focus was on the story and the characters - which gave it an authenticity that lacked in The Ring.

While America could have taken this widely adored Japanese foundation to tell the same exact story (using the same names, storyline, asian cast) but with a bigger American budget to execute the story to the best of our ability or even tell a new version of the story where this cursed tape that originated in Japan made it to American TV screens... Gore Verbinski and Ehren Kruger (screenplay) decided to take unnecessary liberties and white wash the entire thing.

They took Asakawa and named her Rachel. Ryuji is now Noah. Yoichi is now Aidan. And, worst of all, Sadako is now Samara.

In 115 minutes with a budget almost that of 40 times the original, The Ring took an otherwise well-rounded, gripping ghost story, stripped it of its authenticity and culture and reaped its rewards.

And, bigger budget doesn't always equal a better movie. While the effects were practical in Ringu, I found them preferable. It actually looked more believable to me than the sFX used in the newer, American retelling. Now, I realize that may be bias and personal preference, so let me move on.

Liberties that were, in my opinion, unnecessarily taken by the American creators are as follows...

Too many hints or references were made to television and media taking over our immediate lives... From the opening conversation between Katie and her friend to the camera panning from apartment living room to apartment living room while everyone watches their TVs... It has nothing to do with the overarching story of Samara and her curse.

In the original, Asakawa was a busy mother, but not an uncaring one, as Rachel comes off. Throughout the conversation with Aidan's teacher, Rachel comes off as very detached and dismissive. Is this really how we'd prefer American's to act or be portrayed?

And while on the topic of portraying American culture, why was it necessary to add more drugs and sex? Is this really all America cares for in their interpretation of art?

Asakawa was also a reporter who was knowledgable about the cases. This was all over the news. Teenagers all died mysteriously on the same night at the same time. Why was it not portrayed in the same way for the American retelling? The remake comes off clumsy and poorly written. Main character's fumble to answers rather than anything being discovered organically, naturally, or with the least bit of cohesion.

The little boy, Aidan, being weird can't be explained or written off as him having supernatural abilities in the U.S. story either - because they cut that part of the story out entirely. So he's just a weird kid for the sake of being a weird kid? Bad writing.

Which brings me to my last issue... The amount of pointless dialogue was nauseating.

But, now that I have successfully bashed the American remake, I think it's important to give credit where credit is due... I thought their bringing meaning to the curse lasting seven days was intriguing and well played.

That being said, it's not enough to redeem The Ring from the cultural damage it has managed to make. I understand wanting to retell a story if the original leaves much to be desired or to remake it when one has access to a bigger budget, but to completely paint over the original story, changing the names, the background, and casting an all white cast... that is the very definition of white washing. The concept was stolen, rewritten from a white perspective, and spit back out for a profit with no shout out or recognition to the original writers, director, actors and actresses... etc.

And as if that's not insulting enough, it wasn't even (re)DONE WELL.

With this concept, it would have been easy to make an American version of the story from the angle, "What if this Japanese cursed videotape made it to America?" But a choice was made... And it was the wrong choice.

My one critique to improve both versions: MORE SADAKO.