The Ring Full Movie Reaction!
Added 2021-10-22 16:34:31 +0000 UTCThankfully this was actually on Netflix here on Canada, gotta love it when it's easy to find lol
Comments
Unfortunately, the American sequels and even the Japanese ones do a poor job of building on the lore, but you got the gist of it. If you really want to experience the horror you felt seeing Ringu or The Ring for the first time, find a copy of the original Japanese novel, "RING" (there's an English translation out there). Not many people are aware of it's origin as a horror novel. I assure you it's worth the read - Samara/Sadako's backstory is elaborated on much further than it is in the films. I've read a lot of Stephen King and got through just fine, but when I read some of the stuff in RING, I felt anxiety and fear I didn't know was possible from reading a book.
Michael R
2021-10-23 13:21:49 +0000 UTCThis was my first exposure to (westernised) J-horror, and it really intrigued me with the way it treated haunting as an infection. Once you get exposed, it's got you. I liked the 7 days incubation period, where your symptoms slowly get worse. I think Gore Verbinski did a great job in presenting Samara as tragic figure on the surface while everyone who knew her was deeply afraid of her. Her origin and backstory is just hinted at (for example by the Asian script in the archived documents.) What we know for sure is that Samara is deliberately spreading her infection, regardless of who dies. She is not a nice girl. Even her desparate and doting mother eventually smothers her and throws her down a well, then commits suicide. We know that Samara has powers of psychic projection and of electro-magnetism. I sometimes wonder if she had died a decade later, would she have had the same power over DVDs? Overall, I loved this movie as a nontraditional horror story that did not spoonfeed the audience and was visually beautiful.
Michael Nolan
2021-10-23 03:50:26 +0000 UTCThe thing about Samara (at least from what I was able to piece together) is that she's able to basically project her thoughts and images in her mind to other people. The x-ray looking things they had in her file were basically her projecting images or mental drawings onto film, which - I don't think I need to tell you, but I'll point it out anyway - most kids, most people, aren't able to do. So, even though Anna really wanted a kid, Samara was young and didn't know how to control what she could do, so she was broadcasting fucked up images constantly - Anna is so troubled by these images that they exile Samara to the barn (where, I'm guessing, her projection ability wouldn't have as much reach, maybe?), and then all of the horses start going mad because they're in close proximity to her (it also explains why the horse on the ferry freaks out when Naomi's character comes by the trailer - it was because it could sense the wrongness left on her soul, essentially, because of watching the tape - it's the same reason why all of the kids from the cabin and basically anybody who tried to take pictures of themselves after viewing the tape came out looking all fuckity - viewing that tape and exposing themselves to this ability of Samara's essentially tainted them on a very profound level - she was cursed with this ability, so she cursed everyone by making them watch her death as it happened to her over those 7 days and forced them to suffer in many of the same ways she had). But that's the thing - even though they really do push the sympathy for Samara (and I get why - we don't know any of her history and all we know is she's got these abilities and is adopted, so she probably didn't come from a great situation), but at the same time, Verbinski kinda wanted to have his cake and eat it too - he wanted her to be sympathetic but also give these little hints that she might not be as innocent as she appears (that reply in the hospital tape about wanting to hurt people, etc.). I haven't seen any of the US sequels if there have been any, but the lore in this one is interesting enough you can really have fun thinking about it and how it all might work. I'm pretty sure Samara's powers (at least partly) have some effect over magnetic fields and other energy fields, since she's able to *transmit* images from her mind and have them be seen on film. Fun shit! Anyway, awesome reaction, too! Happy spoopy season, boyyos! :D
Rue
2021-10-22 18:58:52 +0000 UTC
