One of the original J-Horror films, the first Ring film Ringu was a notoriously scary film that drew from Japanese Folklore. It was directed by Hideo Nakata, who also directed this film, it was a big hit and has a huge following. The thing is, that had Japanese Actors, whereas this has Americans... this can't end well. The suprising thing is, that it is quite good. Hideo Nakata shines through as the only person who knows a thing about J-Horror in the film.
The Story of the Ring series is that there is a cursed videotape of a series of images, including a well, and if you watch it and don't get someone else to watch it within 7 days a young girl called Sadako will come out of your TV and take you down the well with her and drown you. Your body will then be found in the real world.
The reason I had bad feelings before seeing this film is because there are some crucial differences between Asian and Japanese Horror and Western Horror:
Western Horror relies more on Gore (note the capital G) and psychotic madmen, see Saw, whereas Asian Horror relies far more on suspense and false alarms for it's scares, and most commonly draws on Ghosts and Folklore for it's villains.
Although, it turns out that most of my misgivings were false, this film does most of the time show it's Japanese roots and direction. The American actors have no idea how to act in a Japanese style, but with Hideo Nakata's direction they are passable. The film does get fairly sentimental towards the end, however. The film does manage to provoke a lot of emotions from it's audience, one of the foremost being sadness and depression when finding out the heartbreaking story of Sadako.
+An amazing story, well portrayed
+Very good direction from Hideo Nakata
+Provokes a wide range of emotions from it's audience, which is always good for a film to achieve.
+Scary
-The American actors are not meant to play J-Horror Roles.
-Not as chilling as the original.
Overall: 8 out of 10
