I don't think I have mentioned, sometime over the last year or so, having watched the American re-make of the Japanese ghost/curse story The Ring. It was just OK-ish, my son and I thought; but we both found The Grudge (the English remake, but still set in Japan) much scarier.
Anyway, I saw on Google Play that the original Japanese Ring, or Ringu, was available, and thinking that the trailer looked sufficiently creepy, we decided to watch it.
It was, shall we say, underwhelming. At first, it was close to the American re-make, but then it veered off somewhat. But it's really surprising watching a movie regarded (according to reviews) as being "the most disturbing since The Exorcist" and not being very scared at all. The creepy factor in some movies seems to really diminish quickly over time.
As it happens, I have never watched all of The Exorcist, but from bits I have seen, quite some time ago now, I have warned my son that it almost certainly looks more silly now than disturbing.
Anyway, back to Japanese ghosts: Netflix has recently put up a series from Japan (Ju-On Origns) which is the backstory to The Grudge movie. Looks like the same house. Oddly, though, it is only 30 minutes an episode, which is barely enough to get a good scare going. We watched the first episode last night, and I thought it was worth continuing with. Yet it has had some very bad reviews, and some good ones. It was pretty dark in the first episode: it apparently gets much worse.
I guess I will stick with it, for now...
5 comments:
whatever you do avoid tenet.
It is terrible
You have weird taste.
Ringu was great.
Oh, Homer, that is disappointing to hear. It looked very intriguing in the trailer. But Greg Jericho on twitter said he saw it too and had no idea what was going on in the movie.
Tim: my son said that the video in the movie now looks like the sort of (half-artsy) video attempts to be creepy/mysterious that people now make at home and put on the internet, and I think he may have a point. A bit the same with the effects in The Exorcist, I think - once they look dated and too familiar, they lose power.
Tim, do you like ghost movies? I found the 2007 Spanish one, The Orphanage, to be very effective, and affecting. I did say so here before, back in 2017.
I think I saw The Orphanage. Rather good.
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