Comparison of Fears

Joshua Lee

Professor Dr. Perez Tejada

English 1102 Section D2

05 March 2009

Comparison of Fears

Ever since the horror genre in America began to flourish in the 1960s with Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, American horror films have boomed with a variety of styles and flavors ranging from the teenage horror, Scream, to zombie invasions such as Night of the Living Dead. However, the mass production of horror films has caused the language of horror to be overly clichéd. Gore Verbinski, the director of The Ring, says in his interview, “The horror genre has just been reinvented so many times that it’s hard to set a shot, and not feel like it’s a shot that’s in someone else’s movie when you’re making a horror film” (White). Verbinski tries to reinvent American horror by instilling the perspective of Japanese cinema. He achieves this by remaking the Japanese horror film Ringu into an American version The Ring. He diverts the American remake from the original to a degree that preserves good qualities of the film but targets the American audience by making it more polished, more stylized, more horrific, but less forthcoming with answers and overall a better film.

Before discussing the methods by which Verbinski created an improved remake, it is important to factor in facts for the comparison of these films. Ringu’s production costs amounted to only about $200,000, whereas, The Ring with its amplified Hollywood adjustments cost roughly $45 million. This made a huge difference to the success each film was able to achieve. For instance, Phillips claims in her book Japanese Cinema that “[I]n what must be a first the Hollywood remake is actually better than the original (referring to Nakata’s 1998 film Ringu), claiming that big budgets and special effects actually enhance the sensual horror of this particular Hollywood product” (Phillips). The Ring proved to be a hit with box office sales of $129 million eclipsing the movie’s production costs of $45 million.

An amount that cannot be calculated is the value of the story, which the remake preserves. Both films – Ringu and Ring – share a similar narrative structure with a video tape that brings about the viewer’s death seven days after watching it. In Ring, all the characters are Americans, and the character’s names basically convert to American ones. For example, the news reporter and single mother of Ringu, Akasawa Reiko, becomes Rachel Keller. Both films begin with the incomprehensible death of a young girl, who is Rachel’s niece. This leads Rachel to a cabin resort to investigate the murder, where in one cabin, she discovers the tape. During the viewing, a major difference between the movies is revealed. In the Japanese version, there are images of an eruption, of a woman brushing her hair in the mirror, of a picture of a well, of the infamous ring of light, and of other ambiguous imagery. The Ring’s tape is much longer and more fearsome “to emphasize the more viral aspects of the tape” (White). It involves a ring of light followed by static, then boiling blood, an oversized chair, an identical woman brushing her hair, a finger going through a nail, a tree with bright red leaves, and then the same tree burning.

The portrayal of the story in each movie stands out completely as another significant difference. In the Japanese version, the story unfolds at a slower pace using less action, more conversation, slower editing, and longer camera shots that seem to linger on the characters. Ringu seems to reveal too much about the back-story going into the history behind the events leading to the murder of the young girl. Even though the back-story successfully answers the questions that the viewer would probably have at the time, it loses some shock value. Ring simplifies its plot by not revealing much of the back-story and leaves intact the viewers’ imagination of why the young girl is in her possessed condition.

Verbinski does more “showing” of the story through imagery. He takes advantage of the most defining moment of the film to emphasize the physical appearance of the demonic girl (named Sadako in Ringu; Samara in Ring). In the climax sequence, Sadako/Samara crawls out of the TV screen and approaches the victim on all fours. As the camera zooms into her face in both movies, the realism in the girl’s characteristics are much more pronounced in the remake. Despite Sadako’s torn-off fingernails, her clothes, skin, and hair were clean which did not help illustrate that she just climbed out of a well. However, it does give her a sense of being a post-human entity where a part of her is unaffected by physical interactions, but it is difficult to grasp what she is exactly. Verbinski improves on this aspect by tainting Samara’s image into a pixilated horrific figure with rotten teeth and decaying skin. This effect makes Samara seem more reasonable as a supernatural being that an American audience can grasp within the realm of human apprehension.

Verbinski makes changes in the remake to help the film relate more to American audiences. Much of the success the film received came from the total adaptation to an American cultural background. One such characteristic is that the film takes place in the United States and leaves no traces of Japanese influence from the original. Moreover, the technological factor in the scarring images of Samara as a cybernetic monster effectively intensifies the horror of the film. Also, the television and telephone contributed to the unnerving element of the movie. Todd McCarthy says that it “surely [has] something to do with the universal consciousness of the invasiveness of television and the telephone in everyday lives, as well as with the irresistibility of both inventions; if a TV is on, it’s almost impossible not to look at it, and if the phone rings, it’s hard not to answer it.” The American audience has high expectations of any film produced in the United States. In order to meet American expectations and to exceed quality with a remake, the director should implement advanced technology that the original cannot afford.

Japanese horror films are aesthetically different from American horror films in composition and style. Rather than explicit violence, Japanese horror films scare audiences through psychological means in a heavy atmosphere with usage of ambiguities, effects, shadows and silence. Lu, a film critic, said, “A new way of viewing fear was needed to make the hearts of an audience beat within their ears once more. A new path needed to be found in order to purge the innermost recesses of the mind, where lost secrets, misgivings, and nightmares lurked, waiting to see the light of day.” (Lu) As in Ring, Verbinski used some of the Japanese tactics of horror filmmaking to accomplish a hybridized approach that successfully allowed the audience a new perspective on its fears.

Work Cited

Lu, Alvin. “Horror Japanese-style.” Film Comment 38:1 (Jan/Feb 2002): 38

McCarthy, Todd. "Remake of Japan horror pic sounds a tinny `Ring'." Variety 388:8 (Oct 7, 2002): 21, 29

Phillips, Alastair. and Stringer, Julian, Japanese cinema : texts and contexts / edited by Alastair Phillips and Julian Stringer Routledge, London : 2007

White, Cindy. “Mulholland Drive's Naomi Watts follows director Gore Verbinski into The Ring.”Sci Fi.com. 28 August 2006 .