Was "Ringu" supposed to be scary

[Mondain]

cuz it wasn't

it had many good elements and created a great feeling of tension, but somehow it didn't come together

overall it was dumb and there were too many elements that didn't make sense

and why was everyone raving about "that" scene? I thought I'd be spooked as hell but when it happened it was soooo slow and cheesy, not scary at all, I laughed when the

spoiler (click to show/hide)

girl who can kill with a thought came out of the TV

[close]

also, that character seems to have been ripped off in F.E.A.R.

[demi]

welcome to 2000?

[Joe Molotov]

No, it was supposed to be a comedy. In Japanese theaters, fans come dressed as their favorite characters to midnight showings to throw rolls of toilet paper  and shoot water pistols at the screen.

[Bildi]

While I like Ringu, I actually like Ring better.  

Ringu/Ring/whatever is more about tension and atmosphere than making you jump.  I've read the second Ring book, Spiral, and it has a fantastic unsettling and uneasy atmosphere.

"Little girl with long black hair in a white dress" is an awesome character that I imagine must be quite prominent in Japanese folklore. 

[Eric P]

i prefer the american remake.  it parred down a lot of the excess in the original.

[Mondain]

if it's a shittttttttamerican film, the characters and the actors' play must be annoying in comparison

[Powerslave]

The videotape from the Ringu made me shit my pants for days.

[Mondain]

yeah, it was the only thing that was even remotely unsettling, but even at that it was extremely tame as far as grotesque imagery goes, I expected something a lot more hardcore

and in the end I hated the fact that it contained super dumb "hints" for someone to find

[chronovore]

There's a school of thought that says the tape and Sadako are leaving the hints, that the tape wants to be found.

If you're going to keep watching that series, Rasen was lame and stunningly slooooooooooooow, and Ringu 0 was more or less typical idol-vehicle-movie. Instead, I recommend Dark Water (Honogurai Mizu no Soko Kara), another atmospheric and creepy J-horror film. I want to see the US version, but am not hopeful.

[Mupepe]

it sucked, the american remake sucked too.

someone recommend me a japanese horror film that doesn't suck.  because i've yet to find one. 

[Powerslave]

it sucked, the american remake sucked too.

someone recommend me a japanese horror film that doesn't suck.  because i've yet to find one. 

Watch Ringu.

[Mupepe]

it sucked, the american remake sucked too.

someone recommend me a japanese horror film that doesn't suck.  because i've yet to find one. 

Watch Ringu.

IT SUCKS

[Powerslave]

Watch it until it unsucks.

[Great Rumbler]

it sucked, the american remake sucked too.

someone recommend me a japanese horror film that doesn't suck.  because i've yet to find one. 

Try Charisma, Pulse, Doppelganger, and Cure by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

[abrader]

I have NEVER liked a J-horror film.

I have also never liked an anime.

[Great Rumbler]

I have NEVER liked a J-horror film.

I have also never liked an anime.

Badges of honor?

[Bacon]

Yeah, I was too bored while watching The Ring/The Grudge to be scared.

[abrader]

I have NEVER liked a J-horror film.

I have also never liked an anime.

Badges of honor?

Is it anime or j-horror?

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

Japanese horror is so so severely overrated.

I liked Audition,

I like Tale of Two Sister. - is actually Korean

And I liked 3 Extremes. - Is only 1/3 Japanese

The rest is dogshit.

Sorry to get finicky, but that's one of my peeves.  Anyways, The Ring is one of the very few American remakes of anything that shits all over the source material.  Ah man, I just remembered how terrible the actress was in Ringu.  Shit.  All shit.

[chronovore]

it sucked, the american remake sucked too.

someone recommend me a japanese horror film that doesn't suck.  because i've yet to find one. 

Try Charisma, Pulse, Doppelganger, and Cure by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Yeah, Pulse was good. Actually, I'd say Pulse was really suspenseful for the first half, but quite tedious toward the end. It redeemed itself reasonably well with the final scene, but man that last half hour was draggin'.

I'll look for the other ones, thanks for the heads-up.

[TVC15]

i prefer the american remake.  it parred down a lot of the excess in the original.

+1

[chronovore]

I have NEVER liked a J-horror film.

I have also never liked an anime.

Badges of honor?

Is it anime or j-horror?

[Eric P]

it sucked, the american remake sucked too.

someone recommend me a japanese horror film that doesn't suck.  because i've yet to find one. 

my list of personally approved japanese horror/dark fantasy

audition (overhyped beyond belief.  thankfully as an avant garde elitist i find shit before the rest of the internet does so i don't suffer from oldboy syndrome)

cure

jigoku (or Buddhist Hell or just Hell.  several bad people die in 20 minutes then go to a surreal hell.  bizzarre)

ju-on.  i like the abject nihilism and the insane time line presentation of the film

kairo. the end of the world and you're all alone

onibaba.  revenge meditation.

one missed call.  i really enjoyed this, but it's essentially miike doing j-horror.  revenge ghosts and all.

uzumaki.  horrible ending.  wonderful bizzarre set peices.

don't look up.  hideo nakata's haunted movie set story, but it's so wonderfully well done.  a great love letter to the japanese dramas of the past.  and some creepy stuff too.  too bad it's not available in english.  i first saw it 8 or 9 years ago on the sundance channel during an asian horror series.  the same night i was introduced to miike through Audition and Kim Ki-Duk through The Isle.

the happiness of the katakuris.  takashi miike does musical horror theater.  suck it, burton.

[The Fake Shemp]

One Missed Call... isn't that The Ring with a cell phone?

I dislike Audition.  Not only is it overhyped, but it's just fucking irritating.

[Eric P]

One Missed Call... isn't that The Ring with a cell phone?

The Ring...tone.

[TVC15]

Is that Uzumaki as in the manga?  I thought I heard that was no good?  I love the manga a lot.

[Eric P]

it's not great, but it's fun with a nicely inventive set and production design which translates a lot of Junji Ito's drawings.

the ending is radically different.  i believe because the manga wasn't finished, though i may be mistaken on my dates.

[chronovore]

it sucked, the american remake sucked too.

someone recommend me a japanese horror film that doesn't suck.  because i've yet to find one. 

my list of personally approved japanese horror/dark fantasy

audition (overhyped beyond belief.  thankfully as an avant garde elitist i find shit before the rest of the internet does so i don't suffer from oldboy syndrome)

cure

jigoku (or Buddhist Hell or just Hell.  several bad people die in 20 minutes then go to a surreal hell.  bizzarre)

ju-on.  i like the abject nihilism and the insane time line presentation of the film

kairo. the end of the world and you're all alone

onibaba.  revenge meditation.

one missed call.  i really enjoyed this, but it's essentially miike doing j-horror.  revenge ghosts and all.

uzumaki.  horrible ending.  wonderful bizzarre set peices.

don't look up.  hideo nakata's haunted movie set story, but it's so wonderfully well done.  a great love letter to the japanese dramas of the past.  and some creepy stuff too.  too bad it's not available in english.  i first saw it 8 or 9 years ago on the sundance channel during an asian horror series.  the same night i was introduced to miike through Audition and Kim Ki-Duk through The Isle.

the happiness of the katakuris.  takashi miike does musical horror theater.  suck it, burton.

I'll have to look for Don't Look Up. I enjoyed Nakata's other works, even a special on creepy dolls I dug up at the video store.

One Missed Call was a lot of fun, but it does a shift in tone from creepy to over the top on par with From Dusk 'Til Dawn. I like Miike, but I like his attitude more than his movies. He seems fearless.

I'm surprised to see Ju-on on this list; the house parts were creepy, but the stuff outside the house just seemed gratuitous and mean spirited. I guess that counts as nihilistic, but it just read as slasher movie sloppiness to me.

[Great Rumbler]

it sucked, the american remake sucked too.

someone recommend me a japanese horror film that doesn't suck.  because i've yet to find one. 

Try Charisma, Pulse, Doppelganger, and Cure by Kiyoshi Kurosawa.

Yeah, Pulse was good. Actually, I'd say Pulse was really suspenseful for the first half, but quite tedious toward the end. It redeemed itself reasonably well with the final scene, but man that last half hour was draggin'.

I'll look for the other ones, thanks for the heads-up.

It does drag in the middle with the main characters just wandering around, but the ending is definitely the stuff of legends. I love how KK's movies always start out as some kind of generic horror premise and then turn the whole thing on its head by the ending.

Doppelganger does this very well. The final thirty minutes has the most amazing series of events I've ever witnessed in a movie.

[Mupepe]

it sucked, the american remake sucked too.

someone recommend me a japanese horror film that doesn't suck.  because i've yet to find one. 

my list of personally approved japanese horror/dark fantasy

audition (overhyped beyond belief.  thankfully as an avant garde elitist i find shit before the rest of the internet does so i don't suffer from oldboy syndrome)

cure

jigoku (or Buddhist Hell or just Hell.  several bad people die in 20 minutes then go to a surreal hell.  bizzarre)

ju-on.  i like the abject nihilism and the insane time line presentation of the film

kairo. the end of the world and you're all alone

onibaba.  revenge meditation.

one missed call.  i really enjoyed this, but it's essentially miike doing j-horror.  revenge ghosts and all.

uzumaki.  horrible ending.  wonderful bizzarre set peices.

don't look up.  hideo nakata's haunted movie set story, but it's so wonderfully well done.  a great love letter to the japanese dramas of the past.  and some creepy stuff too.  too bad it's not available in english.  i first saw it 8 or 9 years ago on the sundance channel during an asian horror series.  the same night i was introduced to miike through Audition and Kim Ki-Duk through The Isle.

the happiness of the katakuris.  takashi miike does musical horror theater.  suck it, burton.

sweet.  I'll check it out.  Thanks

[Eric P]

I'll have to look for Don't Look Up. I enjoyed Nakata's other works, even a special on creepy dolls I dug up at the video store.

do!  It wasn't scary to me, but it was fascinating

One Missed Call was a lot of fun, but it does a shift in tone from creepy to over the top on par with From Dusk 'Til Dawn. I like Miike, but I like his attitude more than his movies. He seems fearless.

that sounds about right, but my friend and i really enjoyed One Missed Call.  Esp the television studio set up and set piece.  that was pretty damn awesome.

I'm surprised to see Ju-on on this list; the house parts were creepy, but the stuff outside the house just seemed gratuitous and mean spirited. I guess that counts as nihilistic, but it just read as slasher movie sloppiness to me.

i liked it because it presented the issue as something which couldn't be "solved" even going so far as to say "well you figured out the big mystery and you're still fucked.  thank you for playing" and doing that relatively EARLY.  Structure, tone and execution made it worth while, whether or not it was "mean" I can't really say.  I was quite satisfied with my experience

[Eric P]

holy crap.  it's the Centennial of William Hope Hodgeson's The House on the Borderlands.

Sentient Pigs tear through reality to attack a house in Ireland.

[Shuri]

Ringu was great when it came out of nowhere a decade ago. But since, just about every asian horror flick that came out after copied the style and basic look of the girl; hell even before ringu came out, the whole ghost with black hair was like a common theme in asian horrordom. It doesnt help that there were remakes of pretty much all the big asian films that came after, and they all used the same style. The look of the girl was parodied to death too. Seeing ringu in 2008 could never have the same impact as it did back when it first came out.It's a bit like the Ju-On flicks, I remember seeing the unsubbed original made-for-tv version without knowing much about it wayy back before the movies, we watched it with a bunch of friends and it blew our minds back then.

A decade of copycats and parodies tend to do that to big movies. It's a bit like the old Halloween and Freddy flicks. The originals had a big impact, but watching them today for the first time is kind of a letdown..

It's a shame that asian cinema as a whole is completly dead and worthless nowadays; it went through such a big boom between 2000 and 2003; then it died overnight.

[Eric P]

It's a shame that asian cinema as a whole is completly dead and worthless nowadays; it went through such a big boom between 2000 and 2003; then it died overnight.

well it goes in cycles.

i remember when i was getting into HK cinema in the 90s and people who had been fans since the 80s were complaining about the death of asian cinema.

thankfully there's just so much stuff made that i have a wealth of older films to check out.



along with my horrific tendency to enjoy Korean Romance films

QQ

[TVC15]

along with my horrific tendency to enjoy Korean Romance films

QQ

How do these work?  Does the Korean Tom Hanks meet the Korean Meg Ryan while playing Starcraft?

[Eric P]

along with my horrific tendency to enjoy Korean Romance films

QQ

How do these work?  Does the Korean Tom Hanks meet the Korean Meg Ryan while playing Starcraft?

i used to order from Yesasia all the time and they would throw in free movies if you ordered 3 or more regular priced films.  the selections were often horrible.

however, one time they sent me a film about a guy developing a Second Life type thing falls in love with a girl who is beta testing it.

no joke

[TVC15]

along with my horrific tendency to enjoy Korean Romance films

QQ

How do these work?  Does the Korean Tom Hanks meet the Korean Meg Ryan while playing Starcraft?

i used to order from Yesasia all the time and they would throw in free movies if you ordered 3 or more regular priced films.  the selections were often horrible.

however, one time they sent me a film about a guy developing a Second Life type thing falls in love with a girl who is beta testing it.

no joke

Does the movie end in tragedy as one of the main characters plays an MMO nonstop until they keel over and die in an internet cafe?

[Shuri]

Korean romantic dramas always end up with everybody getting shot.

[Eric P]

Does the movie end in tragedy as one of the main characters plays an MMO nonstop until they keel over and die in an internet cafe?

actually no.  it's kind of sweet to be honest

korean films are fucked up because the end is usually some horrific mind bending trauma

like in the teen romantic comedy "please teach me english" boy tutoring girl fall in love with each other, girl breaks up with him THEN DIES BECAUSE OF A BOTCHED BACK ALLEY ABORTION AS SHE TRIED TO GET RID OF HER ENGLISH TEACHER'S LOVE CHILD

[Great Rumbler]

like in the teen romantic comedy "please teach me english" boy tutoring girl fall in love with each other, girl breaks up with him THEN DIES BECAUSE OF A BOTCHED BACK ALLEY ABORTION AS SHE TRIED TO GET RID OF HER ENGLISH TEACHER'S LOVE CHILD

Wow...that's... 

[Mupepe]

Does the movie end in tragedy as one of the main characters plays an MMO nonstop until they keel over and die in an internet cafe?

actually no.  it's kind of sweet to be honest

korean films are fucked up because the end is usually some horrific mind bending trauma

like in the teen romantic comedy "please teach me english" boy tutoring girl fall in love with each other, girl breaks up with him THEN DIES BECAUSE OF A BOTCHED BACK ALLEY ABORTION AS SHE TRIED TO GET RID OF HER ENGLISH TEACHER'S LOVE CHILD

I need to see that.

[Eric P]

wait, i think that's the wrong movie

let me find the right one

[Eric P]

the film i'm thinking of is Sex is Zero.

sorry.  watched a lot of these in a row and they tend to run together

[Mupepe]

buying now

[HyperZoneWasAwesome]

the film i'm thinking of is Sex is Zero.

sorry.  watched a lot of these in a row and they tend to run together

a buddy of mine told me that was like the K-version of American Pie.  I guess he fell asleep during the coat hanger scene.