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Ringu Vs. Ring

(WARNING: Contains spoilers for the films)

     This article is about my thoughts about the differences between the Japanese suspense/horror movie Ring (Ringu), and its American counterpart, The Ring. If for some reason you're reading this and have no idea what the movies are about, allow me to set up a brief explanation. The novel, Ring,  written by Suzuki Koji in Japan, is about a cursed videotape that supposedly kills whoever watches it seven days later, and a reporter (Asakawa Kazuyuki) attempting to solve the mystery around it after he himself has watched it. With his friend Takayami Ryuji, they discover that Yamamura Sadako, daughter of Yamamura Shizukoa (a presumed psychic who correctly predicted a volcanic eruption that killed hundreds of people), is the person behind the video. The only thing is...Sadako has been dead 30 years before the video-related deaths began. Several movie adaptations were made, spawning several sequels, television series, manga, and video games.

Now...onto the comparison:

For easy reference, here is a list of key characters in the movie, and their Japanese counterparts:

Both movies begin the same with Rachel Keller/Asakawa Reiko's niece (Katie/Tomoko) at home with her friend. They talk about the cursed video, and the niece reveals that she watched the video in a cabin in the mountains with her boyfriend and two others exactly one week ago. The phone suddenly rings, and they head downstairs to answer it. When her friend picks up the phone, she gives a blank expression, and hands it to Katie...who finds out that its just her mom on the other line, running late. Katie's friend goes upstairs to use the bathroom. While looking through the refrigerator, Katie's television turns on to static in the next room. Thinking that her friend is trying to scare her, she turns it back off. Walking out of the room, the TV turns on again. She rushes to it, and unplugs the set. Wondering what is taking her friend so long, she heads upstairs where she sees water running out from under her door. She opens the door, where she is met with her television showing the scenes of the cursed video rapidly and...she dies.

I was very pleased with the American version of this scene. The house looked so much like the original, that at one point, I thought they may have used the original set. Nearly everything in this scene was the same, down to several parts of the dialogue. The only difference is when the niece dies. In the original, the television turns on only once, to a baseball game, and the niece dies shortly after, while pouring a drink.

From here one, the American version steers away from the original, with some bits left the same. Rachel Keller, who, like Asakawa Reiko, is a female, unlike the male Asakawa Kazuyuki from the novel. Rachel is late picking up her son Noah from school. Upon arriving, Noah's teacher tells her that he is upset about his cousin's death, and has become more sheltered than usual, and has begun drawing disturbing pictures. The next day, Rachel goes to her niece's funeral where her sister recounts the discovery of Katie's body in the closet...with a horribly misshapen face. Outside, Rachel talks with Katie's classmates, discovering that her boyfriend supposedly killed himself the same day that Katie died. At her job as a reporter, Rachel discovers that Katie, her boyfriend, and her two friends who died in a car accident, died exactly at 10:00...

The original's scene of Asakawa interviewing one of Tomoko's classmates about the video is replaced with the scene of Rachel picking Aidan up from school. This scene starts something that bugged me about the American version. Rachel is portrayed as a mother who pays little attention to her child, consistently late picking him up from school, and had a history of drug abuse. While Asakawa was often late coming home to her son, she still paid attention to him, and had none of drug abusing history. A change in scene order is made when Aidan asks his mother about his cousin's death, and if children die too. In the original, this happened when Asakawa was getting ready for the funeral. I was pleasantly surprised when a small scene in which Aidan has already laid out his mother's clothes and is already dressed for the funeral made it in. The funeral scene is nearly identical. A small change is made during the quick flash of Katie's body in the closet. Rather than outright show her face like in the original (which actually wasn't disfigured, IIRC), her long hair is covering most of her face, like Samara/Sadako's. I was a little disappointed that the car crash was barely even mentioned in the American version. I also dislike the fact that Aidan calls Rachel by name, rather than "mom."

The next day, Rachel goes into Katie's room, and retrieves a slip for pictures being developed. Rachel stops in the store, and gets the pictures that were taken the day that the teens watched the video. They all look normal, until she gets to a picture in which the teens are standing outside of the cabin they were at. All their faces are blurred and disfigured. The same holds true for all the pictures taken after that. Curious, Rachel heads up to the mountain where the cabin is. She stops in, and rents the cabin that Katie stayed at. Eyeing a rack of videos that people had left behind, she picks up an unmarked tape. Inside the cabin, she puts the tape in, and watches it. Seemingly unrelated scenes of disturbing imagery flash by on the tape (A burning tree, a woman brushing her hair, drowning horses, a ladder and chair, and lastly a well are just some of the images). When the tape turns to static, the phone suddenly rings. She runs over and picks it up. A small girl says, "Seven days."

The pictures were more disfigured in the American version, one of the reasons why I think that it is "more weird than creepy," unlike the original. Before watching the video in the cabin, Asakawa reads her niece's diary, which was at her house in the American version. Not important, but it helps set the scene for the video viewing. Finally, the video. The very thing that sets the movie into motion. Well...perhaps you should see both for yourself:

American video (2.3M Requires Quicktime)

Japanese video (2.7M .avi)

The American version is again, more weird than creepy. The images in the video are more in number, and even has several scenes that have nothing to do with the rest of the movie (The man with the the thing coming out of his mouth, the maggots-to-people, severed fingers) while some parts are extremely minor (the centipede under the table, the walking fly). The Japanese version, though, all parts of the video are utilized in the movie. The eerie "music" played during the original video helps to give it the creepy feeling.

Noah, Rachel's ex-husband/boyfriend, comes over to her house. She tells him of the video, while he just scoffs at it. Rachel tells him to take a picture of her with her camera. He complys, and the image is distorted. Noah watches the video and thinks nothing of it. Regardless, he decides to help Rachel determine the origin of the video and how to break the curse. Back at her office, Rachel and Noah make a copy of the video. However, when the copy is played in a VCR, the counter numbers are messed up. Because of this, the video couldn't possibly exist, as all videos have a signature which the counter keeps track of. Trying to find the tape's origin, they discover a lighthouse on a obscured portion of the video. They trace it to an island and discover that the woman on the video is Anna Morgan, a horse breeder.Later that night, Rachel awakes to see Aidan in front of the television with the final scene of the video playing. He tells her that "she is in the dark place. The horses keep her awake." Rachel grabs the video, and throws it under the couch.

I thought it was interesting that the picture on Rachel's camera was still distorted, despite it being a digital camera. The scene where Aidan is watching the video is quite similar to the original. However, it was disappointing that the boy speaking in his dead cousin's voice didn't make it. Searching for the lighthouse's location was similar to Asakawa and Ryuji searching through old newspapers to find the moving text on the tape.

They discover that Anna had a daughter, and Noah sets off to recover her records. Rachel sets off to the island with only one day left to live. On the ferry, she starts pets a horse in a carrier. The horse suddenly goes berserk and breaks out of its container. After chasing Rachel for a bit, it jumps off the ferry, and is torn up by its engines, leaving the flood of blood as seen in the video. On the island, Rachel finds the Morgan's ranch. She confronts Mr. Morgan about the tape, and makes it clear that Rachel is not wanted. 

The whole horse seen was just out of place and wasn't really explained. Granted, it probably has something to do with Rachel being cursed, but it was still odd. Some fans were quite worried about the film after seeing such scenes in the trailers.

After speaking to Noah about the Morgan's daughter, Rachel speaks to the island's doctor. She discovers that the Morgans were trying to have a child for years. One year, they left, and returned with a daughter who was reportedly adopted. Apparently strange occurances began upon the daughter's arrival. The horses on the Morgan's ranch would snap and drown themselves. The doctor tells Rachel that Samara, the Morgan's daughter was admitted to a mental institution. Noah attempts to find a video interview of Samara in a humourous scene in the institution. However, the tape is missing...

Samara's origins remain true to the original's as it is not quite clear who the father is. The suicidal horses is reminiscent to Sadako willing people dead during Shizuko's psychic exhibition. Why couldn't they have people from the island die rather than use suicidal horses? Fans have noticed that one page in Anna's file was written in Japanese; a nice little nod.

Rachel heads back to the Morgan's ranch, where she searches for the missing video. The centipede from the video crawls out from under it. Watching the video, Rachel learns that Samara was sheltered, and possibly abused. Mr. Morgan sneaks up behind Rachel, and cold-cocks her in the head. Tangled in extension cords and a power strip, he picks up the television and tape. Rachel follows him upstairs, where Mr. Morgan is standing in a full bathtub, proclaiming that his wife was never meant to have a child, and that she was the reason that she killed herself. He drops the television into the tub, and kills himself.

This was another thing that upset some fans: Samara's face was uncovered and not disfigured. Because of this, it doesn't make sense that the victims have their faces distorted, whereas in the original, this was because Sadako herself had a disfigured face. Sadly, Samara's line from the trailer, "Everyone will suffer," was cut. Oddly, Rachel wasn't electrocuted despite standing on the soaked floor. Oops...

Noah meets Rachel on the island, looking for clues. Rachel remembers back to when Aidan told her that "the horses keep her awake." They head into the barn, and climb up a ladder. There, they discover Samara's "room." A bed, chair, and television are all that sit there. They discover a crack in the wallpaper, and tear it down. Behind it is a painting of the burning tree from the video. Rachel remembers it from the mountain cabins. They head there, with time running out. At the cabin, the trail has run cold...until marbles spilt from a jar begin collecting at a spot on the carpet. They rip up the carpet, revealing a shoddy repair job. They break through it and discover a well. Realizing that this is "the dark place," they remove the cover from the well. The house shakes, and the static-showing television knocks Rachel into the well. Noah runs off to get a fire hose to pull her out. Rachel notices scrape marks on the wall, and realizes that Samara was still alive. She discovers Samara's still-perserved body, then gets a vision of Anna putting a bag over Samara's head, and dumping her in the well. Suddenly, the cover gets put back on the well. Noah returns, and the body suddenly decomposes. Soon, paramedics arrive, and get Rachel and the body out of the well.

Samara's seclusion was an odd spin on invoking her rage upon humanity. It is more believable than Sadako killing someone simply because they called her mother a fraud. The painting of the tree doesn't make any sense, nor does it being deliberately covered up. Having Rachel being knocked down into the well just ruins the sense of urgency of finding Samara's body. It's barely even acknowledged that they thought the discovery of Samara's body would break the curse. It was an unexpected surprise that Anna killed her own daughter, and helps to explain her suicide. Oddly, Samara didn't even struggle. Odder still is that Anna would drag Samara all the way to the mountains on the mainland without any explanation to Samara. Lastly, the covering of the well with Rachel at the bottom was pointless as the cover was off again when Noah arrived.

Back at home, Aidan asks why Rachel removed Samara from the well, and that she just wanted to be heard. She becomes worried for Noah, and rightfully so. She begins to call Noah's home...where the copy of the video suddenly turns on. Noah walks up, and sees the well in the video, only Samara is climbing out of the well. She slowly creeps forward, and crawls out of the television. Noah desperately crawls away while Samara is creeping/teleporting towards him. Noah lands in a chair and... Rachel arrives a short while later, with the phone still ringing. She slowly steps toward the chair, and turns it around. In it is Noah, with his face horribly twisted. Back at home, she yells at Aidan to go to his room, as she wonders what she did that Noah didn't. Then, she spots the tape under the couch. She copied the tape. Realizing this, she makes Aidan copy the tape, who wonders who they will show the tape to.

I was happy that they used the movie-version of the video killings. Samara/Sadako crawling out of the television added an extra layer of creepiness. However, it creates a mistake that was in the original: the death of the teens in the car. In the book, Sadako didn't kill her victims by appearing in a video. The victims only needed to see themselves in any reflective surface. Once they did so, they would see themselves greatly aged, and would feel their chest tighten and die. Thus, the teens died because they saw themselves in the windshield. Samara only wanting attention was just odd. Sadako at least had a justifiable reason for killing people.

One plothole that existed in the original still isn't fixed in the American remake. And that is how the video became cursed. First, Sadako was based on the real life Takahashi Sadako, who was said to be able to focus her will to create an image on film. Secondly, in the novel, Sadako not only hated hated humanity for their calling her mother a fraud; she was also raped. She was raped by Nagao Joutarou, the last known patient in Japan who was treated for smallpox. After the act, he discovered that Sadako was actually a hermaphrodite (both sexes). Angry at this fact and because of his act, he dumped Sadako down the well. Sadako attempted to kill Nagao by forcing her rage to the top of the well, where it lingered even after her death. Years later when the cabin was built over the well, Sadako's rage found a suitable media to transfer itself to: the video.

All in all, in was a decent movie. Small nods to the original, and similar scenes kept me happy. I was also impressed during the scene where only Noah's face is disfigured in the store security camera. However, the somewhat wooden performances and the whole horse plot hurt my enjoying of the film. The lack of silence also hurt the film. There is music playing in nearly every scene. And, while not the movie's fault, watching it in a theater doesn't give it the same effect as watching it at home. Watching it in the comfort of one's home helps to make the viewer fear not only for the characters, but also for themselves; a feat that few movies can do.

They could have easily kept the Shizuko psychic plot, along with the volcano eruption. They could have just used the Mt. St. Helens eruption. It would be a little more recent, but it would have been more true to the book. So, it was a somewhat enjoyable retelling of the story.