Two Movies One Book, THE RING

Original Post Date: 02.11.18

The year was 2002 and I was on vacation with high school friends, just a bunch of us kids very far away from home experiencing life for the first time. Total freedom. I am not going to bore Me with details I already know but let’s just say the events that took place stayed with me for a long time.

Back then, I had a strong relationship with horror but not like nowadays, oh no sir, nothing like nowadays *insert evil laugh here*, yet, I was not prepared for the fantastical experience we were about to have when we all decided to go to the local movie theater of the small town we were visiting to watch EL ARO (THE RING). My friends were as vanilla as they come (sorry guys) so the mere thought of them wanting to watch a weird horror movie was shocking to me and I welcomed it with open arms. I remember many things from that night but two things were particularly special: The big jump scare of the film and the whole theater reacting to it (so many screams, so many nervous laughs, so good!), and our sleeping arrangements for the evening where all seven of us spent it in one single room next to a washroom (I know, a damn washroom) which started making noises, water noises, as we were trying to fall asleep (so creepy, so perfectly timed, so good!).

By the way, this was the big jump scare scene I mentioned (wait for it):

Right, so that was 2002. Fast forward to most recent years and THE RING stills stands as one of my top-twenty favorite films from my horror collection. Fast forward to a month ago when I read for the first time the 1991 novel “Ring” by Koji Suzuki which inspired not only THE RING but its original Japanese predecessor, RINGU (1998). Did I mention that our American version was not the original but a remake?

The book was such a treat to read. The characters were so imperfect and human and I fell in love with them immediately, especially with Ryuji. Asakawa was cool and all but Ryuji was my main man! He was smart, perverted (allegedly, no one could prove it either way), fearless, funny, incredibly resourceful, and a true survivor until [spoiler alert] he died by the hand of Sadako. Sadako by the way was a young powerful woman when she ended her life (allegedly by forcing her rapist/killer with her super-charged ESP powers into pushing her into the water well located by the TB Sanatorium in the woods, which decades later became the infamous cabin in the woods where the VHS video was found, which OMG the video turned out to be Sadako’s projected memories [the screen going black was her eyelids, blinking!] along with disturbing random images), she ended her life due to loneliness and shame for not being able to be a mother (she was a hermaphrodite thus not being able to conceive), but little did she know that her “kids” one day would turn out to be the killer video tapes, video tapes which had to be copied to save the life of the unlucky one who happened to watch it; the seven-day curse was like a virus that could only be stopped by creating more, reproducing like a virus, stopping by not stopping, brilliant!

“Asakawa! Wasn’t your deadline 10:04? Rejoice! It’s 10:10! Asakawa, can you hear me? You’re still alive, right? The curse is broken. We’re saved. Hey, Asakawa! If you die down there you’ll end up just like her. If you die, just don’t put a curse on me, okay? If you’re going to die, die nice, would you? Hey Asakawa! If you’re alive, answer me, dammit!” – Ryuji (Excerpt from “Ring” by Koji Suzuki)

So yeah, the American remake movie as well as the book were both a hit for me, but what about the Japanese original movie? Well…

Sorry to say this but I fell asleep in the middle of it. Wait. What!? Why!? Easy answer: The movie felt too rushed and easy (the main characters did not struggle at all in putting together the pieces of the puzzle, unlike the book), and since I found out—sadly—from the first scene that this Japanese version was going to be an almost exact mirror from my beloved American version (or if we want to be a dick about it, that the American version was in the end an almost exact mirror from the Japanese original version), well, I pretty much knew what was going to happen play by play before it happened. Not to say that it was a bad movie, not at all, on the contrary, the Japanese movie did a great job at adapting the book and putting on screen ideas and concepts from the renowned horror author Koji Suzuki, I mean, come on, the movie was such a hit that we had to remake it.

Now, I would like to end this post by showing you screenshots of my favorite scenes from the Japanese movie, scenes that were both pivotal to the story and visually pleasant:

Final thought: if you have never read the book or watched either movie but want to, I would strongly suggest you first watch the Japanese version, followed by the American version, and until then start reading the book –by doing this you would increase the Wow Factor from the whole Ring experience, in my humble option that is.

Now, if someone could make a faithful play-by-word movie based 100% on the book, that’d be great.

- Marath

Thir13en Ghosts (2001)

Original Post Date: 01.10.18

For the last couple of days I have been trying to figure out how to write this post because, to me, talking about Thir13en Ghosts (2001) feels like a tall order. I like the movie a great deal (I mean, did you read my last post? I know, right?) and somehow my insecurities are messing with me, making me try to believe that no matter how hard I try my words would not make the film justice. So tonight, my weirdo friend, I say ‘Fuck my insecurities’ and let me just write what I think, what I feel, what I love about Thir13en Ghosts.

But first, let us admire this beautiful video put together by youtube user tonightsreality:

The movie reminds of a haunted house, an ultra-sophisticated haunted house, that is. It also reminds of a museum, of an undeniable authority of beauty. A house that’s not a house.

Arthur Kriticos is the main character, the widower, the heartbroken father of two, the struggling Math teacher, the surviving nephew, the heir. He is loving, kind, polite, and certainly the one I would like to have in my team should I ever become trapped in a huge basement full of ghosts. He is the voice of reason. (also, quick parenthesis, should someone ever told me that fifteen years after I saw the movie I would be married to a guy whose step-father was related to the actor who plays Arthur, I would have laughed at his face and call him a nut-job, yet, here I am)

Dennis Rafkin is such a fun character and I am not going to lie, one of the main reasons why I fell hard for the movie. Yeah, the actor was cute and stuff but his mannerisms, attitude, sense of humor, comedic timing, as well as his struggles with authority, with substances, with himself, that’s what made me obsess over him. I mean, just look at him:

Now, let’s talk about the ghosts, shall we? Out of the twelve ghosts, my two favorites were The Angry Princess and The Jackal. And now that I think about it, they both are opposites. One is female, beautiful, naked, timid, poise and sophisticated, a danger to herself. The other is male, vile looking, wearing a straitjacket and a cage over his head, acting all over the place, like a wild animal, a danger to everyone. (oh, so poetic)

Besides these two ghosts being so appealing in the movie, as in, when you actually get to see them on screen, their backstories [found on the dvd special features] were equally amazing. Here they are:

The Angry Princess: She is Dana Newman, who did not believe in her own natural beauty. Abusive boyfriends fueled her low self-esteem, which led to much unneeded plastic surgery for imagined defects. Eventually she got a job working for a plastic surgeon, getting paid in treatments rather than cash. Alone at the clinic one night, she tried to perform surgery on herself, but wound up blinding herself in one eye and permanently mutilating herself beyond saving. She committed suicide in the bathtub by slashing her body repeatedly with a butcher knife. When she was found, people noted that she was as beautiful in death as she had been in life. Her ghost is naked, still carrying the knife she killed herself with and showing all the wounds, and the inside walls of her cube are splattered with her blood. In her bathroom scene, the phrase “I’m sorry” is visible on the floor in blood; subtitles also reveal that the blurred, hissing speech that announces her arrival is her whispering “I’m sorry.” This was written on her suicide note. 

The Jackal: He is the ghost of Ryan Kuhn, who was born in 1887 to a prostitute. Ryan had an insatiable lust for women, rape, and murdering prostitutes. Wanting to be cured, he committed himself to Borehamwood Asylum, but after attacking a nurse, he was put in a straitjacket and thrown in a padded room. After years of this imprisonment he went completely insane, scratching at the walls so violently that his fingernails were torn completely off. The doctors kept him permanently bound in his straitjacket, tying it tighter when he acted out, causing his limbs to contort horribly. Still fighting to free himself, Ryan gnawed through the jacket until the doctors finally locked his head in a metal cage and sealed him away in the dark basement cell. There, he grew to hate any kind of human contact, screaming madly and cowering whenever approached. When a fire broke out in the asylum, everyone but Ryan escaped. He chose to stay behind and face the fire. As a ghost, his arms are free from his jacket, and the bars of his cage are ripped outwards, showing that he may have escaped his bindings again sometime before the fire started and that his cage may have heated up enough to where he could have ripped it open before the fire consumed him.

From the top of my head, here are some of the other things I really enjoyed from the movie: the entire music score and selected songs (Massive Attack!), the opening scene at the junkyard, the truck full of blood, the greedy lawyer splitting in two, the spells written on the floor and walls, the exterior window/walls moving, the cubes and their decorations based on their ghost, the book collection, the toy collection, the dark basement, the main bedroom and its bathroom, the tub full of blood, I’M SORRY written in blood, when all twelve ghosts are together around the circle and Arthur starts counting them, Math being the element that ultimately saves Arthur, all the ghosts walking free into the woods.

Aaaahh, that felt good. I finally got it out of my system. I finally put into writing why I love Thir13en Ghosts.

Here, let’s toast for Loving & Accomplishing things — hear, hear!

Until next time,

-Marath

Ghostest With The Mostest aka Ju-On (2002)

Original Post Date: 12.06.17

I don’t get scared easily. No, in fact let me rephrase that. I do not get scared. Period. What I experience when watching horror movies is not fear, is excitement. Why? Well, I actually have no idea but I should ask my therapist about it… Anyhow, imagine my surprise when I got scared, really (really!) scared when I watched for the first time Ju-On (2002). I could not believe it, I was in full fear mode, sweaty palms, accelerated heartbeat, arms hugging my legs which were close to my chest. It was so silly, I was alone in the dark at night, sitting on my bed, watching a foreign horror movie, feeling vulnerable, like a child.

I was introduced in my early twenties to Ju-On by a college friend who let me borrow his dvd and, if I am not mistaken, that one was the very first Japanese horror movie I ever saw… I don’t know, man, up to this day I cannot tell you exactly why the movie was so terrifying to me. Yes, it was subtitled, subtle, slow, yet not boring. And yes, there were murders, a haunted house, curses, evil spirts, ghosts, yet none of that sounded particularly exhilarating to me. But how wrong I was to judge it… I was proven how little it was of me to think that a country such as Japan would not be equipped with the knowledge needed to make me feel afraid of ghosts, I mean, the Japan, the one home to Yurei. (for info on Yurei go here)

I can tell you without a single doubt that my favorite ghost in a movie is now Kayako, followed by Toshio, of course (dead kids are so creepy).

Well, my weirdo, do you want to take a look at some of my favorite scenes with Kayako? Yeah?? YAY! Here they are:

This is it for now, it is getting late and we all have to go to work tomorrow. Good night.

- Marath