kpduty

I don't know if you ever saw the first RING, or the original Japanese verison, RINGU. I have seen both. RINGU kicked all sorts of ass.

Here's an interlude: I've seen enough Japanese horror that I think I can safely generalize here. Japanese and American horror are incredibly different. A lot of it's on the surface; we Americans seem to revel in the splatter a little more than the Japanese. Not that they don't appreciate gore...they do. But there's a strange psychological aspect that's far more terrifying. The Husband and I have discussed this at length. There's something intrinsic about the Japanese mind and culture that America can never grasp, and you see this reflected in our "attempts" to "redo" Japanese horror for American audiences. Think of the things we fear in films: sharks, Freddy, Jason, Michael Myers, zombies (even though nowadays other countries are doing zombies better than we are; George Romero, save us with your LAND OF THE DEAD!!!). Then there's Japan: a land descimated by atomic warfare; a culture that reveres the ancient, the anscestral, whose religions are seeped in supernatural; a pop sensibility that is an amalgum of many, and yet totally alone on its own island. Their horror is infused with a profound loneliness and alienation, oftentimes with a strange convergence of the technological and the spiritual that is everywhere and inescapable. And we just don't get it. Even when Freddy is chasing you in your dreams, you can still grab onto him, fight him physically. He's tangable. Michael Myers is psychotic, but he's real. I think the only thing America really does right in horror is The Devil, and it's because Christianity has permeated our consciousness to such an extent that even Islamists and Buddhists can understand the threat to our souls. Ghosts can't really hurt us because Souls are Good, if ghosts even exist. God doesn't allow such nonsense here. The threat in Japanese horror can't be touched: it's the primal raging of a wronged lost soul, and you can't stop it. The wrong can never be made right.

And that's the most important difference: in Japanese horror, Good never triumphs over Evil. And that's scary.

The first American RING movie came close to this idea by sticking to the main plot points of RINGU: the only way the Mother can save the Son is by spreading the evil, sacrificing an innocent in his stead. But where they failed is that the American version tried to give the action in the story a Reasonable and Rational Explanation. And in RINGU, there was no explanation. How could there be? Why do you need one? Why do you need to know WHY something is happening if there's no way of ever stopping it?

So RING 2 begins following the end of RING, with Rachel and her son, Aiden, moving into new digs in a small town in Washington State; they've saved themselves by showing the Samara tape to someone. Rachel, through her job on the small town paper, learns of a death she suspects involves a copy of said tape. Finding the tape, she burns it, releasing Samara's soul from the confines of the Magnetic Strip Of Doom to possess Aiden's body and attempt a real life. Stuff happens, the hottie from CBS's THE GUARDIAN gets himself killed, and Rachel saves the day twice, very anti-climatically both times. THE END.

I have to admit that I enjoyed RING 2 quite a bit. It was a lot of fun, even though there were some problems.

1) Remember the end of POLTERGEIST? How the Freeling family, having escaped the evil that sucked their youngest daughter into Limbo through the TV, go to a motel and toss the Free HBO out onto the balcony? That was AWESOME. You KNOW they're never going to enjoy a February Sweeps ever again. Beginning of RING 2? Rachel and Aiden have just escaped an evil that ATTACKS PEOPLE BY COMING THROUGH THE TV SET, and yet in their new house they have THE BIGGEST FUCKING TV SET EVER. And it's not even plasma. I don't know much about the paranormal and endoplasmic transmission, but since most psychic and supernatural occurrences involve some sort of electromagntic interference, do you think a plasma or LCD set would prevent spiritual manifestation? Just asking in case the need to buy a new set arises. But still, LADY GET RID OF THE DAMN SET!!! I seriously couldn't believe it when I saw it.

2) Rachel and Aiden TOTALLY had my living room rug from Lowe's!!! It was very distracting, because it was totally devoid of cat hair.

3) I may have mentioned this before, but I have a thing about real life stuff. As anyone living in real life would, ha ha ha. But seriously, I have to mention the AWESOMEST scene, where Aiden goes into a park bathroom and sees Samara in the mirror behind him and takes pictures of himself as she creeps up on him. THAT WAS AWESOME!!! Digital cameras scare me. As do mirrors.

Here's a fun trick: Tonight while you're brushing your teeth, when you bend over the sink to spit, think briefly how FUCKED UP it would be if you stood up and there was someone STANDING BEHIND YOU!!! TOTALLY SCARY!!! This trick also works when you have your eyes closed while washing your face, and also when you're washing your hair in the shower. Bathrooms scare me. I think this is because of THE X-FILES: nothing good ever happened in a bathroom on THE X-FILES.

4) Poor Simon Baker. All he wanted was some tail, and instead he ended up dead. There's a lesson in that somewhere.

Also: Rachel leaves him dead in a RUNNING TRUCK OUTSIDE HER HOUSE. Explain THAT ONE to the police, especially after your crazy kid left a dead doctor in his hospital room. Even though we know she's not responsible for any of it, imagine how what's going on with Rachel must look to the police. Just once I'd love to see a movie where the police are like,

"Umm, you desperately wanted your son back from Child Services so you killed his doctor, stole him from the hospital and took him home, and then killed your co-worker who came to your house, who was the person who called Child Services on you in the first place. And your defense is what?"

"I didn't do any of it. A dead girl from a videotape possessed my son."

"Umm, okay."

5) This is my biggest problem with the movie, and I will leave it at this because I have to pee and I also really should work on ordering some stuff for work. The problem with horror movies today (and I think it's due in large part to the fact that American filmmakers are dumbing them down to get a PG-13 rating and thus get a bigger audience and more money) is that people in horror films don't say "fuck" enough. Seriously, there were SO MANY TIMES during the film that if I was in that situation? I would totally say "fuck." Fuck is such an awesome word to use in situtations where you're confronted with Unimaginable, Unconquerable Evil. It fits every instance, depending only on change of inflection.

Surrounded by a pack of crazed deer? "Ffffuuuuuck." Son just morphed into a dead body in front of you? "FUCK!!!"

Seriously, if you were an Evil Spirit, and someone came at you instead of running away in fear, and she's all like, "YOU FUCKING FUCK ASS BITCH, YOU LEAVE ME AND MY SON ALONE OR I WILL SO FUCKING FUCK UP YOUR UNDEAD ASS YOU FUCKHOLE DAUGHTER OF A FUCKTARD!!!!" I know I would think twice about doing battle with her for her son's soul.

So, in conclusion, I think I'm going to write my own horror movie. I know I promised that FLUSH POINT would be out sometime in the near future, but I feel it's my civic duty to correct this injustice of language. Because if we cannot tell the Evil invading our lives to fuck off, then the fucking fuckwad terrorists have fucking won.