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I've been slow writing this up, so here's a few thoughts. They're all fulla spoilers, so if you want to go into the remake a virgin, scroll away.
The big problem is the script, for a couple of different reasons. Glaring issue number one is the backstory, which is needlessly complicated. While I can see the studio having doubts about the original story translating to American audiences, what they've sent along as an alternative just doesn't cut it.
Instead of a simple little psychic story, we're given this pieced-together thing were a horsebreeder and her husband have a child, who ends up being locked in the barn attic, possibly because she's been giving the mother visions. In any case, the father (awesome Brian Cox) doesn't like her, so she's fucked from the get-go. When the confinement doesn't stop the visions, the mother pushes the daughter down a well and you know the rest.
Two good things come of this: there's a big sequence with a horse on a ferry that's well done, but it means fuck all in terms of the story as a whole. And when we see the room where the daughter was kept, it's got a little bit of resonance, which I'll get to in a minute.
But the story is presented in a disjointed series of confusing flashbacks that work too hard to logically explain an ultimately illogical premise. The suernatural aspects of the Japanese version are better - the whole thing's dodgy to begin with, so you just accept it and move on. But there's no way to do that in Verbinski's version, as the film pummels the audience with unneccesary exposition. The end result is a film that goes on too long instead of just getting to the point. The original is of perfect length, with nothing that could be trimmed. There's a lot of excess in The Ring.
Two other script things.
One: Dialogue.
A lot of it is bad, and in any case there's too fucking much of it. In at least four scenes things would have worked a lot better if everyone on screen would just shut the fuck up. Please. "It's over." "How long could she stay down there? I don't know. Blah fucking blah." We get it, alright? SHUT. UP.
Two: Rachel - the main character
She's a bitch. She's not a busy mom who's ultimately attentive. She's just a bitch, and a bad reporter, to boot. Scenes in which she interrogates Brian Cox and others make me wonder how she ever gets a story written. Naomi Watts is very good, which becomes more apparent when you realize she's swimming upstream against a script that works overtime to make her unsympathetic. As a side note, her kid is too Sixth Sense from the beginning. Maybe it's that I can buy an unnaturally responsible nine-year-old who's Japanese, but not an American. dunno. Either way, while the original Koichi was cool and a little unnerving, The Ring works too hard to make Aidan supernaturally knowledgable. Case in point: the scene where he's laid his mother's dress out for the funeral is played for a creepy effect, rather than to show what a good kid he is. Why? No reason.
And the big problem. The Meaning. Television is bad, m'kay? As if having Sadako crawl out of a tv isn't enough, we have Rachel literally attacked by a television, and the point hammered home that Samara (nee Sadako) was mentored by television. Look for all sorts of unneeded dialogue in that scene. The one good bit in the whole "television is evil" sceme is that when we do see the barn attic, it looks a whole lot like the set for a TV show. I thought that was a nice touch. But then they blow it by talking too much. But the whole moral thing is still half-baked, and corrupted by the delivery medium. Nice try. Leave it alone.
And why do the two records rooms we see in the film look like they're out of Session 9? I mean, it's a major newspaper and a hospital for chrissakes! They look like the map room on the fucking Titanic. Creepy production design is one thing, but that was stupid.
So, um, good stuff.
The effects are better, and fairly well-restrained. The scene with Samara crawling out of the TV is very good, and I think more effective than in the original. All the acting is good, even though the two main actors are facing a conspiracy of script, makeup and wardrobe to make them less effective. Namoi Watts really turns it on in the last third, making me believe that she's the youngest actress who's readily willing to Look Like Shit Whilst Crying onscreen. That's worth something. And Brian Cox. His last scene is a great one.
The overall feeling is right. The look is on, and Verbinski has copied shamelessly from the oringinal wherever the script lets him. Most of the time it works, and when you resign yourself to the idea that most Americans will never see the original, I suppose it's an appraoch you can argue in favor of. The people in the audience with us certainly bought it, as have most of the people I've talked to who had no idea it was even a remake. Whatever. I don't love the original as much as most people and I certainly don't love this one. But despite all it's problems, which are many and easy to point out, I still think there's a pretty good core in The Ring, and that's worth checking out. |
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