Ringu VS. The Ring

The Ring
Year released: 2002
Directed by: Gore Verbinski, who gifted us with the wonderful Pirates of the Caribbean film in 2003, then  also gave us the two dreadful sequels to Pirates of the Caribbean and 2013's Mondo Floppo The Lone Ranger.
Starring: Naomi "Bitchface" Watts, Martin "whothehellamI?" Henderson, Daveigh "Donnie Darko" Chase, Brian "I used to be Hannibal Lecter" Cox and Amber raingutterlips Tamblyn.

Remember when this film first came out? Jesus, it was the biggest mass pants-wetting I'd ever seen. People were making an Exorcist-sized fuss about it, proclaiming it to be the horror version of the second coming of flaming Jesus H. baldheaded Christ on the proverbial crutch and in the proverbial taxi cab. "It's the scariest scary thing ever to scare everybody everywhere on the face of the whole entire earth, ever!" seemed to be the unanimous cry drifting up from the squealing masses of braindead piglets choking the entryways of cineplexes all over America. And they looked up and shouted "Don't you agree?!" And I looked down and whispered "No."

Because I went into the movie theater that night unaware that this was a remake, that there was an original Japanese version. I went in completely ignorant to the plot, with no idea of what to expect, just hoping against hope that this time I would be truly scared, terrified senseless, profoundly disturbed.

But I wasn't. I sat there in the darkened theater and watched a slightly scary rock video unfold, all high polish and slick production and by-the-numbers scare cues, scheduled every 20 minutes like clockwork...and like every other goddamned slasher flick to be released since 1975 or so. Filled with improbably beautiful people and squeaky clean kids, it was like watching the Disney version of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

There was no one in this film I could relate to, nothing at all present that seemed tangible. And granted, yes, it's supposed to be a horror film, a dark fairy tale that occurs in that dimension that exists just a couple of electrons to your left. But with that inability to connect went any and all genuine feelings of concern I should have had for the characters. I didn't care if they died. They were so flat and lifeless and self absorbed that they were practically dead anyway. Even the character of Samara did little more than get on my last nerve, making my hand itch to slap her face and consequences be damned. She didn't scare me at all. She was too doll-like, to sugar-sweet, too pretty with a voice like a storybook bunny that couldn't have been anymore saccharine if she'd been given a Cindy Brady lisp. She instilled no fear in me.

This was the remake's biggest mistake - trying to humanize Samara. Turning the camera on her face, showing us the monster in her virgin white dress, stripping away all of her mystery. Instead of the child born out of wedlock, we get the adopted daughter who clears her mother of any wrongdoing simply by not being an issue of her body. She's just a changeling, a diseased stray brought into an antiseptic household. That can happen to anyone. But when the issue is deliberately conceived as a contract between arrogance and evil, that changes everything.

Ringu
Year released: 1998
Directed by: Hideo Nakata
Starring: a bunch of Japanese people whose names I can't pronounce.

It was only months after I sat, utterly unimpressed in the theater, watching The Ring that I learned that it had been a remake of a Japanese movie called Ringu, which I then made it my mission to see. For whatever reason, it wasn't easy to find back then. I think I eventually tracked down a bootleg copy in Los Angeles at one convention or another.

Ringu, based on the book by Koji Suzuki, is a shaky newborn fawn of a film. It's an unsteady bridge between ancient Japan - filled with ghost stories and superstitions - and Japan on the brink of the 21st century, bursting with technology but still mistrustful of it all (the use of the phrase "Moshi Moshi" when answering the phone is key here.) Into this already fragile world comes a new threat - a vengeful ghost who has learned how to manipulate electronics to spread her rage. Televisions, videotapes, telephones, cameras: the ghost of Sadako Yamamura will not be confined to the traditional trappings of the Japanese ghost, She's moving forward, learning all she can about technology and making it her own personal domain.

Woe to the Westernized Japanese teenager who thinks that they can leave their ancestors and ghost stories and beliefs behind. Sadako will be their punishment for neglecting the traditions and daring to forget about the girl whom no one wanted, everyone hated and feared and whose own father murdered her, dumping her body down a remote well and leaving her to die.

But was he really her father?
Throughout the film, we know for a solid fact that Sadako's mother was Chizuko Yamamura, a powerful psychic whose predictions brought her fame and fear. A single mother in a time when such a thing was absolutely unheard of, Chizuko never tried to hide the fact that Sadako was her daughter, born of her flesh and blood, possibly fathered by the disgraced Professor who sought to make a living exploiting Chizuko's talents.

We're also told (and shown) that Chizuko - although modestly clad in Geisha robes and acting every bit the lady in public - was fucking batshit psycho crazy. She took pride in her abilities. She gloated over her triumphs. And she had a disturbing habit of staring at the sea every day for hours and hours, speaking to it in a language that no human had ever uttered or heard.

And this is where the tale veers off slightly into Cthulhu land, as it is suggested that Chizuko had a special relationship with the "goblins" who inhabited the ocean, and that it was one of these creatures who fathered Sadako. She can kill with a thought, she takes pleasure in doing so, she can project her memories onto film without benefit of a camera or any other recording device. She is so powerful she can warp time and space, be in several places at once and never has to lay a finger on her victims. They die screaming in agony, the mere sight of her face enough to drive them into insanity, her fury so strong it stops their hearts. She never speaks, her face (but for one eye) is never glimpsed. All we know of Sadako is her long black hair hanging like a shroud over her face and her waterlogged fingers stripped of their nails. Water is her element and she leaves it behind wherever she goes. If Sadako were American, she'd be the Queen of Innsmouth.

Sadako was never human. She wasn't some cute little orphan girl. She was a deliberately planned vessel intended to carry her father's profound evil out of the ocean and into the world. She was more Lovecraft than Hollywood, never intended to be cute, or anything to sympathize with. And everything in the film Ringu reflects her true nature: the disturbing soundtrack filled with watery grunts and unholy groans, the murky videotape footage swimming in a sea of static. And Sadako herself is no charging bull of a child, emerging from the TV like a static snow ghost. She's solid and deliberate, oozing out of the screen slowly, with jerky shrugs and inhuman twitches. She's very, very real, and therefore much more frightening than the flickering specter of Samara.

So, I suppose I owe a small debt of gratitude to The Ring, for had it not been made I quite possibly never would have gone looking for the original. And the original Ringu is, without a doubt, one of the most authentically chilling, noisomely disturbing and truly frightening films I have ever seen.