Monday, November 08, 2004

The Grudge (the original one)

We saw this last night on DVD. You can tell it's by the same guy who made Ring, because some of the same motifs are used - the loud ringing phone, the distorted photographs, the blurring of the border between tv/video-land and real life, the dead who come back...

It'll give you the heebie-jeebies too (full marks for creepiness), but the story doesn't make as much sense as the plot of Ring did (and Ring's plot didn't give much closure either). It'll be interesting to see how the American version works out, whether it tries to spell out an understandable story line for Western viewers.

6 comments:

Casyn said...

You'll have to let me know what you think. I'll have to wait a while to see if I can convince anyone else to attend with me anyhow. :-)

Violet said...

You may get there before me - I didn't see The Ring until many months after I saw the Japanese original.

Violet said...

I'm afraid you'll have to keep your eyes open during the Japanese one, 'cos it's subtitled!
:-)

Casyn said...

You could always have the person you see it with read out all the subitles. May ruin the atmosphere though. :-)

I saw an image for it in this month's Empire mag and it's this girl with her jaw all broken and open and bleeding. It totally freaked me out, enough even, to scare me away from the film. I'm undecided. I may need to find someone to take and hold my hand. :-)

Violet said...

Trust the Americans to get all explicit. They did the same thing with Ring - in the original you never get to see how the victims look when they're found dead.

Rent the Japanese version first, as it will leave more to your imagination (if you were over here I'd just offer to sit in with you!).

Casyn said...

I'll see if I can locate the original version while I'm in locations more likely to have it.

Thanks for the offer Violet! I hope to get over there one day. Hopefully sooner rather than later. :-)