Contradicting Popular Opinion: The Ring

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Contradicting Popular Opinion:

A.K.A.

An Enquiry Concerning Why Your Favorite Movie Sucks: The Ring

I understand remaking and reinterpreting classic movies. The results might suck, but I understand this thing.

I understand turning a TV show into a movie. Whether it be a continuation like Serenity or Star Trek or an SNL parody gone horribly awry like Dragnet, I understand this thing too.

What I fail to understand is the logic behind re-making a relatively new movie. Abre los Ojos becomes Vanilla Sky , Ringu becomes The Ring, etc. What the f*ck?

I understand the existence of a language barrier. Of course, back in my day we had a little something I like to call “dubbing.” We also occasionally snuck in Perry Mason to explain the goings-on to the Americans.

Maybe Hollywood doesn’t think middle America can appreciate a movie starring non-whites. Maybe they’re right. I don’t really know.

In any case, we have:

The Ring

The Ring is one of those movies that offers chills by exposing people to the ugly truth that other more successful people used to raise horses. Or something like that, I wasn’t really paying attention. There was some third rate Videodrome going on at some point, some stock footage, and various shots of a hayloft.

I guess horses are funny looking critters. That could be scary I guess.

Anywho, the real source of terror here is a bootleg video cassette. Seven days after you watch said pirate copy, your telephone “rings” (ooooh creepy). It’s death on the other end. Or a witch. Or a creepy horse. I’m still not quite sure.

At any rate, the horsewitch of terrible death is calling you. Fortunately, horsewitch confuses your telephone line with your fax line, and a hilarious sequence of noises ensues.

I’m kidding of course. Death is using the dial-up in the next room and thus it disrupts the- no wait… that ain’t right either.

At any rate, you wind up with an embolism or an aneurism or some such nonsense. Then, you die.

The whole mess is made by Gore Verbinski. Gore is busy right now making 2 sequels to his inexplicably popular Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. He has also made Mouse Hunt, and the wildly unpopular film, The Mexican. I imagine he gets a lot of work from people confusing him with Gore Vidal.

The Ring features the allegedly “good” Naomi Watts as its lead. You may know Watts from Tank Girl and Children of the Corn IV: the Gathering.

Can’t say that I’ve ever seen Tank Girl myself. I wonder if she fights mutant kangaroos in it or if she is a mutant kangaroo in it.

Watts was also in 21 grams. I think I had a column about that thing too.

There is a kid in there too. I forget to whom he belongs, but my guess would be Toni Collette’s character from that M. Night movie. Dead Bruce Willis is really getting on this kid’s nerves.

At any rate, the flick is one of those modern horror movies where a bunch of random shit happens, we are pointed to “ghosts” as being responsible, some more random stuff happens, and the movie ends without bothering to clue us in on anything of importance.

In a fairly recent interview with the Chicago Tribune, Wes Craven attributes the problem to the MPAA. Modern horror movies are so heavily censored that the easiest route to take is to remake Japanese ghost stories. That way one can rely on an atmosphere of “spookiness” and avoid having important scenes removed for gory content.

(There is a weird story involving the movie Scream and the censorship of entrails, but only if said entrails moved. I’ll tell you about it some other time. You should also know how Last House on the Left got its R rating.)

I have a problem with this strategy. I have many problems with this thing. First, it amounts to pre-emptive censorship. Second, these ghost stories tend to not make any sense even with all of their scenes intact. Third, ghosts aren’t f*cking scary.

Maybe I’m in the minority here, but I don’t find any of these things to be remotely scary. Maybe it is due to the lack of rules when dealing with spirits. Werewolves, zombies, and vampires all have rules. They might vary from flick to flick, but they are there. We know what the monsters can do. We know how they are vulnerable. We then can see what the hero has to do to beat them.

Ghost stories seem more random. The hero can sometimes run away where others just instantaneously die. Sometimes the ghosties are intangible, other times not. It all just seems random and silly to me.

I don’t know.

Freddy can attack you while you dream. That I get. You need to dismember the dead-ites. You have to destroy the brain of Romero zombies. When the hero tries to best the baddie, I know what they are trying to do.

Plus, so many of these modern horror films send the wrong message. They seem to say, “fear is good. Fear is keeping you alive. There are things man wasn’t meant to know. knowledge is dangerous. Stay afraid and stupid.”

Fuck that shit. These are films of oppression. Good horror is counter-culture. Good horror flicks illustrate society’s problems by putting them in a different context. They make statements on individuality, fascism, mindless consumerism, fanaticism, and so on.

The novel Dracula sees knowledge, science and technology as the tools to battle the old world monsters of superstition.

The message of Frankenstein isn’t, “don’t tamper in God’s domain.” That is what we think it is about. Really, it is about the importance of being a good parent.

These modern horror tales are just crap. Yeah, I know, not very eloquent.

Anyway, back to The Ring, I will say one good thing about it: Brian Cox. He doesn’t do anything particularly wonderful in the flick, but we here at CPO have unconditional man-love for Brian Cox. He is the man. When he lets us down, he immediately makes up for it. Case in point, he was in that wretched film, Braveheart, but also showed up in the better kilt movie that year, Rob Roy. His scenery munching in Troy made the movie watchable at times. He was a better Hannibal Lector (or Lektor) than Hopkins.

And don’t forget Super Troopers.