HORROR BETWEEN CULTURES. Re-experiencing The Ring.

Recently my littlest sister and I were having a movie night and she wanted a
list of good scary films.  I looked at the list on her phone and made
suggestions accordingly while we waited for our pizza.
 
Something struck me about the titles I suggested for the list.  All of them
were remakes of foreign horror films.  "Quarantine", aka "REC"; "Silent House";
"The Ring" aka "Ringu"; "The Grudge" aka "Ju-on"; "Let Me In" aka "Let the
Right One In."  The film my sister picked that night was "The Ring", the american version of
the japanese hit, "Ringu."  She liked it and it had been long enough between
viewings that I got a new perspective on it.  This also allows me to make a
larger point about what happens when you adapt source material for different
cultures.

Let's start with the original novel.  Published in 1991 as "Ringu", Koji
Suzuki's novel about a reporter's quest to uncover what killed a family member
struck a chord in it's home country.  It's a good cocktail of urban legend,
technophobia, and that old staple of Japanese horror the vengeful female ghost.
 The title comes from the neverending cycle of this cursed videotape that kills
you in a week.  The novel's protagonists are two men, the reporter and a friend
of his who's basically a nihilistic sociopath.  The nature of the girl at the
center of the curse is different and there's a better explanation in the novel
for the need to copy her endlessly.
 
"Ringu," the 1998 adaptation of the original novel takes some liberties with
the book beyond the basic plot.  They changed the gender of the reporter and
the nihilistic sociopath is the ex husband of the reporter.  The nature of the
tape is basically the same.  The ex husband has some psychic abilities that act
as a visual shorthand to get the info you need across at times.  The fate of
the girl and her family have changed the most between the book and the film. 
They basically made it palatable for a bigger audience without losing the main
idea behind the story.  This isn't the first time this has happened and it
won't be the last.  The novel "Let the Right One In" was similarly neutered but
for it's benefit.  The nature of the monster in that story was changed by not
revealing a few key points from the book.  The horror is lessened but still
effective on screen.  The American remake "Let Me In" simplifies it even
further without losing the impact of the story.   

"The Ring" most directly adapts the 1998 feature and the original novel.  The
protagonists and the plot turns are basically the same.  I will say that the
American version has a slight edge in atmosphere but I think that's mostly
because "Ringu" feels like a TV movie by Hollywood standards and "The Ring" is
a big budget studio feature.  There is a lot more shocks in this film and set
pieces that goose the audience.  I got the impression that the filmmakers
didn't trust the audience to stay awake or something.

But here's where I think the cultural differences come in.  There's a
difference in running time between the two features of about twenty minutes. 
That extra twenty minutes in the American version is devoted to those
unnecssary shock scares and the dreaded "Jake the Explainer" roles.  And yet,
with all that explanation on the screen I still had to explain to my sister
what was going on in the ending.  Believe me it wasn't just her.  I saw this in
theatres in 2002 and you could feel half the theatre go "Huh?"  I saw the
japanese version later and only THEN did I get what was happening in the end. 
The novel does a better job explaining all of this. 

I think horror works best when the reasons for WHY this is happening to people
isn't really spelled out.  This is why I tend to enjoy the first film in a
franchise rather than the sequels.  One of the complaints I remember about the
american version is once that countdown starts you're just sort of waiting for
the end to see if how they get out of it.  To be fair that's a problem with the
set up for both versions.  But japanese culture has a different relationship to
ghosts than western culture.  Japanese culture treats spirits as part of the
scenery.  They only become dangerous if they become something else.  A ghost by
itself wouldn't necessarily be scary--just something to be respected.   
American culture tends to treat a ghost as a problem to solve.  "How do we help you
pass on?" 

The American version also spends much more time using the scientific method to
break down what this is and what it isn't.  It feels like a quick class in
video production in some of these scenes.  That is completely missing from the
Japanese adaptation but is pulled liberally from the original novel.  

I can recommend both versions of this movie as I think they represent two
responses to a classic ghost story.  More films and books are in this franchise
and while I haven't seen or read all of them they go in wildly different
directions and beyond the scope of this piece.