It's a feel-good story

August 24, 2016 2:06 PM

Rings is a movie that is a sequel to the movie Ring, a heart-warming tale about a little girl who falls in a well. Here, she gets out of the well again and gets to meet lots and lots of people, including everybody on a plane! I mean she kills them all, but those are the times we live in.
posted by angrycat (76 comments total)

Oh, man, I hope this is good.

Also, I love that Ring has at least 3-4 different mythology tendrils, between the JP films, the US films, the original novels and the manga, all of which I believe are ongoing. The film Sadako vs. Kayako (a crossover with Ju-On/The Grudge is 2016 and Tide the latest novel by Suzuki in the Ring shared universe (or whatever it is) was 2013.
posted by griphus at 2:12 PM on August 24, 2016

is this something I would need to own a TV to be afraid of?
posted by philip-random at 2:13 PM on August 24, 2016 [40 favorites]

What happens if you watch it somewhere there's not a phone? Has this been answered? Would Skype or a Google Hangout suffice?
posted by jscalzi at 2:13 PM on August 24, 2016 [17 favorites]

This looks terrible.
posted by Brocktoon at 2:14 PM on August 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

Things I like about this:

1) The video's up on the youtubes now, that's cool.
2) Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio
posted by phunniemee at 2:16 PM on August 24, 2016 [11 favorites]

This isn't going to help poor Sawako make more friends. :(
posted by maryr at 2:16 PM on August 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Umm.. was that the whole movie? It seemed to show all of the necessary plot points and nothing more needs to be explained.
posted by FallowKing at 2:18 PM on August 24, 2016 [9 favorites]

Well sure, but what happens *after* the plane crashes, huh? Huh? Pretty big mystery!
posted by jgooden at 2:21 PM on August 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

:/
posted by codacorolla at 2:25 PM on August 24, 2016

Hold on, how many days?

Could you speak up?

You know, hang on for a second, I'm going to grab a pen.
posted by ODiV at 2:29 PM on August 24, 2016 [25 favorites]

huh, so Final Destination, basically?
posted by Existential Dread at 2:29 PM on August 24, 2016

Relevant xkcd
posted by Hactar at 2:30 PM on August 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

A franchise movie? From a Hollywood studio?! That brings back a property people had mostly forgotten about?!?

Unthinkable.
posted by The River Ivel at 2:31 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Relevant xkcd

Well so the whole thing in The Ring is that you DON'T die if you make a copy and share it, so I feel like having the thing up on youtube is an interesting twist, that I have no doubt will be steamrolled into a gigantic pos by this movie, but still. Because it's ultra easily copiable and sharable that way, so you'd think the moist tv girl would be appeased. Her message is getting out there, yeah? Like and share! Thumbs up, comment, and subscribe! But clearly something goes terribly wrong with that model, because it looks like maybe some bad things are happening in this trailer here.

My fingers are crossed that the movie at least addresses this.
posted by phunniemee at 2:37 PM on August 24, 2016 [10 favorites]

The Ring (2002) had a budget of $48m.... The Ring Two (2005) had a budget of $60m... Rings (2016) has a budget of $33m.
posted by FallowKing at 2:47 PM on August 24, 2016

2) Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio Vincent D’Onofrio

The D'Onofrio portion is definitely the highlight for me. Between this and "The Magnificent Seven", he looks like he's having a damn good time. DANCE, GOREN! DANCE!
posted by AlonzoMosleyFBI at 2:47 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I read Blood Meridian recently and kept picturing The Judge as a cross between Vincent D'Onofrio in Daredevil and a shaved Donald J Trump
posted by angrycat at 2:51 PM on August 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Now that I've seen the trailer, I feel fairly confident that seeing the entire movie is unwarranted.
posted by xyzzy at 2:51 PM on August 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Ring has at least 3-4 different mythology tendrils

In movies I count 3: the US timeline, and the JP movies which branch after the Ring into the Ring 2 timeline, and the Rasen/Sadako3D timeline. (I think I got all of them in my post on Sadako vs Kayako)

I haven't seen any of the non-movie content.

This looks... not very good. In general the first US Ring movie was OK but the sequel was terrible and this looks worse. I still haven't gotten to see Sadako v Kayako but that looks way more fun.
posted by thefoxgod at 2:53 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I feel like seeing this film, much like Ring Two, won't make me turn on all the lights in the house and watch Amélie immediately after I get home as a chaser the way I did for the first The Ring.
posted by infinitewindow at 2:53 PM on August 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

So the Guardians of the Galaxy are gonna be in the next Avengers movie, and Skull Island is setting up a Godzilla Vs. Kong movie, and Tom Cruise is making a Mummy movie that's supposed to get the ball rolling for Universal's Classic Monsters Cinematic Universe, and of course we've already had that Jason Vs. Freddy foolishness.

But it seems to me that we're never gonna get to the Cultural Singularity with these tame, obvious crossovers. If Superfriends/Scooby-Doo was acceptable in the 70's, why can't we have The Guardians Of The Galaxy meet The Hunchback Of Notre Dame, or Freddy Vs. Thor, or Sadako Vs. Godzilla? Heck, they used to put Abbot and Costello in these things; surely there must be some modern comedians who would show up for a monster movie. Would Louis C. K. do it? Stewart and Colbert? If I had a hundred million dollars I would at least make some INTERESTING bad movies.
posted by Sing Or Swim at 2:55 PM on August 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

I hope this trailer only covers the first fifteen minutes of the movie, after which the main character wakes up, looks at the empty DVD case of The Ring, and is like "Whew, it was all a dream!" BUT THEN OH SHIT IT'S FREDDY KRUEGER SHOWS UP AND SAYS "NO IT IS A NIGHTMARE"
posted by robocop is bleeding at 2:56 PM on August 24, 2016 [18 favorites]

More Ringo than Ringu.
posted by howfar at 2:56 PM on August 24, 2016

maryr: Yeah, they should have made Sawako vs Kayako instead, where Kayako starts spreading nasty rumors about Sawako but later they become friends and Kayako teaches Sawako the joys of killing.
posted by thefoxgod at 3:02 PM on August 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Your description of this movie brought me more amusement than just about anything else that has happened this week.
posted by SpacemanStix at 3:02 PM on August 24, 2016 [6 favorites]

jscalzi: "What happens if you watch it somewhere there's not a phone? Has this been answered? Would Skype or a Google Hangout suffice?"

"telegram."
posted by boo_radley at 3:14 PM on August 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

More Ringo than Ringu.

OH RINGU NO!
posted by Joey Michaels at 3:17 PM on August 24, 2016 [11 favorites]

I love Sadako/Samara and I love Vincent D'Onofrio, so I'll watch this sooner or later, but it's definitely not the holy-shit-amazing-looking-surprise-long-delayed-sequel that is Blair Witch.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:33 PM on August 24, 2016

I hope Vincent D'Onofrio saves the day with the weaponized velociraptors he deployed in Jurassic World.
posted by ejs at 3:37 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Would it work as a flipbook?
posted by gottabefunky at 3:44 PM on August 24, 2016

Just don't take the call. Who are these people that are answering their phones all the time?

I don't usually even do that for friends, certainly not when it's some crazy ghost girl that I've already been warned about.
posted by absalom at 3:55 PM on August 24, 2016 [14 favorites]

I never understood the ending of The Ring. I liked the inversion of the typical "find the tormented spirit's body and lay it to rest properly" trope with the kid's freakout when they took the girl's bones out of the well. But what difference did it actually make? The girl's ghost was already super powerful and murdering people. So it's not like they made it worse? So why did she want her body out of the well so badly?
posted by Justinian at 4:02 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

It was established in the first movie that it doesn't matter if you take the call or not, it's watching the video that marks you.

And yeah, this doesn't look too good. The first US Ring was great, the second one kind of shit, and this looks... derivative.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:03 PM on August 24, 2016

Or, yeah, "candygram" and instead of a shark, it's a well!
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 4:04 PM on August 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Sadako Vs. Godzilla

Don't be silly, Godzilla never answers the phone.

Although watching the Cosmos (the little fairy women) from Mothra fight Sadako might be fun....
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:27 PM on August 24, 2016

Years ago, I watched Ringu with my roommate at the time. Both of us have a lot of movie experience, but, when the climax hit, we were both "holy crap!" It was a very powerful film. A week later, I was home along, and the phone rang. I picked it up to a dead line. Suddenly, I was... "oh... shit...." and then the telemarketer came on the line. I have never been so relieved by being annoyed.
posted by GenjiandProust at 4:29 PM on August 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

Sadako vs Kayako, worst idol group ever.
posted by betweenthebars at 4:31 PM on August 24, 2016

You mean Rings isn't the live-action Sonic the Hedgehog gritty reboot movie we've all been wanting?
posted by BungaDunga at 4:37 PM on August 24, 2016 [13 favorites]

thefoxgod: Chizuru would be put off a bit, but Ayane would totally have her back. And Kurumi would just kill everyone.
posted by maryr at 4:39 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

What happens if you watch the video on your phone?
posted by teraflop at 4:42 PM on August 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

More Ringo than Ringu

relevant Pingu
posted by philip-random at 4:50 PM on August 24, 2016 [7 favorites]

More Ringo than Ringu.

How about Rango? Because I'd rather watch Rango than any of these movies.
posted by zardoz at 4:59 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Justinian: "I never understood the ending of The Ring. I liked the inversion of the typical "find the tormented spirit's body and lay it to rest properly" trope with the kid's freakout when they took the girl's bones out of the well. But what difference did it actually make? The girl's ghost was already super powerful and murdering people. So it's not like they made it worse? So why did she want her body out of the well so badly?"

I've only read the first book, and haven't seen any of the movies, but:

She didn't want her body out of the well. Or, rather, she didn't care one way or the other about her bones. In a certain sense, there wasn't even really a "she."

Asakawa and Ryuji, investigating this curse, find out that this powerful psychic girl (Sadako) was raped by a doctor, thrown down a well, and murdered by throwing heavy rocks onto her. So they assume that it's a vengeful spirit type situation, and that if they take her bones out of the well and give them a proper burial her spirit will be at peace and the curse will be lifted. So they find and properly bury the bones and, sure enough, Asakawa's deadline (so to speak) comes and goes and he's still alive and fine, and there aren't many pages left in the book, so Asakawa and Ryuji (and the reader) think that it's all over. Then SURPRISE TWIST Ryuji dies when his deadline comes. So Asakawa is like WTF?! and figures out that it wasn't about the bones at all. Sadako had been infected with smallpox by the doctor who raped and murdered her, and so there was basically a fusion of her psychic power and rage and the innate drive of smallpox to reproduce, producing a curse which killed anyone who failed to pass it on. Thinking she wanted her bones to be found and given a proper burial was just their mistaken assumption.

If anything, given the depictions in the story, you end out thinking it's not a story about the ghost of a human named Sadako, it's the story of a disease that transmits itself psychically instead of physically.

(The Wikipedia descriptions of the movie plots are kinda bare so apologies if this is all actually in the film and I'm just saying stuff y'all already know.)
posted by Bugbread at 5:18 PM on August 24, 2016 [12 favorites]

Bugbread just said it much better, but, yeah, Sadako (voiceless in life) wants everyone to know what happened to her, so her rage propagates endlessly as a meme (more literally a virus in the books, and there's some dubious stuff about her being intersex and wanting to "reproduce"). She's like my very favorite angry woman of horror. You can feel pity for Sadako and dig up her bones, you can feel compassion for her, but you're not gonna shut her up.
posted by thetortoise at 5:25 PM on August 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

The American film didn't IIRC even mention smallpox so, uh, yeah it was a little different.
posted by Justinian at 5:27 PM on August 24, 2016

The weird bit with the horse jumping off the boat creeped me out more than any other part of the movie and I've never been able to put my finger on why.
posted by orrnyereg at 5:38 PM on August 24, 2016 [5 favorites]

Justinian: "The American film didn't IIRC even mention smallpox so, uh, yeah it was a little different."

That's a shame. There were two things that I thought made the novel interesting.

The first is that, in my recollection, that it's like 90% mystery novel and only 10% horror novel. The vast majority (as I recall, it has been two decades) is about how they uncover the story based on researching historical records and figuring out where a dialect is from and the like. So when people started talking about how scary the movie was, I was like "Eh? The only scary stuff is in the first 30 pages or so, and after that it's all about research and sleuthing..." So I gathered that had been changed significantly.

The other thing I thought was interesting was the nature of the curse. So in the U.S. version it's just a straightforward ghost story-type curse? That's so...overdone. Any MeFites who have seen the Japanese version, was the smallpox nature of the curse addressed, or was it cut in the Japanese film as well?
posted by Bugbread at 5:55 PM on August 24, 2016

There wasn't any smallpox in the Japanese version, best I can remember. I was the film projectionist, though, so I missed the parts around the changeovers.
posted by topoisomerase at 6:24 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I don't think Ringu explained anything about the virus/etc. I can't remember if it came up in the sequels/Ring 0 (although Ring 0 introduced the "2 Sadakos" thing which is a little confusing too).

Wikipedia addresses the various descriptions like this:

Most other incarnations share one thing in common: Sadako's need to reproduce, something she can not do herself, as she is portrayed as an intersexual. This is generally the reason why she creates the "Ring Virus", since she will "live on" in it, as long as her DNA merged with that of a strand of the smallpox virus still exists. In some incarnations, the "Ring Virus" is simply treated as a mysterious phenomenon rather than a biological virus; in these versions, she is portrayed as having created it to wreak vengeance on humanity.

Also says that Spiral (one of the novels) is apparently where the virus is described in more detail.

If you only watched Ringu I don't think it's terribly clear whats going on.

While checking this I discovered there is also a Korean version of Ring, which I'm curious about now.
posted by thefoxgod at 6:56 PM on August 24, 2016

They should have had the little girl say "I ♥︎ SENPAI"
posted by fungible at 6:59 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Even without the smallpox the text of the American remake is pretty clear that they think they're going to "solve" the tape by putting Samara to rest, but in fact she just wants to spread. That's what the final scene of Naomi Watts' character looking out at everyone in the neighboring condo watching TV is all about. She's planning how to spread, or has already spread, the disease to others to save herself and her son.
posted by codacorolla at 7:34 PM on August 24, 2016 [2 favorites]

🎶I've got spurs that Ringo Rango Ringu🎶.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 7:34 PM on August 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

The description at the top of the post makes me want a whimsical Miyazaki version of Ringu, about a friendly girl ghost who lives in a well and travels through TV land to visit people. That movie, in my imagination, is far superior already. I think I will stick to watching that.
posted by LeRoienJaune at 7:42 PM on August 24, 2016 [12 favorites]

Candygram.
posted by sourcequench at 8:15 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

While saying this might cost me some cred among hardcore horror movie buffs, the US version of The Ring was much better than Ringu, despite the latter having a much more effective coming out of the TV scene at the end. Even setting aside production values that the US version was able to pour more resources into, and the film being more filled out because of that, the big thing for me was that the underlying metaphors for the two versions were distinctly different, and not to Ringu's advantage.

From memory, it's been close to fifteen years since I last saw it, the sort of controlling metaphor for Ringu seemed pretty closely tied to a conservative borderline misogynist view of women, where the virus is passed from crazed psychic mom, to daughter, to divorced journalist who escapes harm by, essentially, killing her ex husband. There seemed to me to be a thread of narrative logic that tied the virus to "dangerous" women outside the accepted societal norms that sparks the horror in the film.

In the US version, the underlying metaphor is that its television or media itself that is the motivating horror to which the movie is addressed. The suggestion coming from Samara's treatment by her family, where she is forced to live in isolation at the upper level of the barn with only a TV as companion, Samara's adopted father wiring himself before hopping in the tub, the jobs Rachel and Adrian have in working with the media, where Rachel is accused of spreading sickness as a reporter, and in the imagery of the film which Gore Verbinski handles exceedingly well. (Verbinski also directed Rango, so there's the connection for ya. He just needs to make a Rungo now.)

As to the trailer, I just don't get why Hollywood marketers always assume more is better when that needn't be the case at all. I mean the opening scene in the trailer could almost stand alone as a hook to see the film if it was drawn out just a bit more. Throw some quick cuts of other suggestive or visually dynamic moments and people would be more than satisfied. Basically like the international trailer for Miike's The Audition

You don't need the whole plot laid out to draw people in. In fact it probably helps if you don't say too much anymore since people will nit pick everything you do show anyway. I mean there are a lot of ways to make a good trailer, but the current popular method is terrible for anything other than feeding the same urge that makes all these sequels so popular, showing people what they already know so they'll go back to see it again. It's sad really.
posted by gusottertrout at 9:23 PM on August 24, 2016 [4 favorites]

I never thought of it as a disease metaphor before, but I think that's why it always seemed so silly to me. If you treat it rationally, like a disease, it's pretty tame.

You'll die in 7 days, unless you can pass it to someone else, who will then to die in 7 days. (As I understand it.)

Even if it was really a 7-day death sentence, you could find somebody willing to take it for a price, but it isn't even a death sentence, because the 7-day clock resets with each new carrier, so any group of 52 people could effectively stave a particular "infection" off for a year. The CDC would clean that up in its sleep.
posted by bjrubble at 10:10 PM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

Yeah, "American remake" is one of the most dreaded terms in the horror lexicon, but in this case The Ring is the better film on every level.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:41 AM on August 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

The obvious crossover here would be The Ring x Liu Cixin's The Dark Forest.
posted by fmoralesc at 3:44 AM on August 25, 2016

because the 7-day clock resets with each new carrier, so any group of 52 people could effectively stave a particular "infection" off for a year

Time to write my screenplay about a microcephalic girl named Zika who was murdered in a well but came up with the idea to propagate her psychic curse-virus through mosquitos and sexual contact.
posted by ejs at 4:09 AM on August 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

bjrubble: "Even if it was really a 7-day death sentence, you could find somebody willing to take it for a price, but it isn't even a death sentence, because the 7-day clock resets with each new carrier, so any group of 52 people could effectively stave a particular "infection" off for a year. The CDC would clean that up in its sleep."

Easy enough to fix, though: you have to infect two people within 7 days. Start with one person and the whole world is dead by week 33.
posted by Bugbread at 4:45 AM on August 25, 2016

The first one was The Ring, and this one is Rings?

"Tape over, man! Tape over!"
posted by gauche at 4:47 AM on August 25, 2016 [2 favorites]

I have had it with these motherfuckin' rings on this motherfuckin' plane!

*crowd cheers*
posted by middleclasstool at 5:07 AM on August 25, 2016

So in the U.S. version it's just a straightforward ghost story-type curse?

Not quite. The backstory is that the girl what becomes the Ring Ghost is a cursed offspring of some barely-hinted-at dark rituals or dealings. That girl is eventually snuffed because she's just Too Darn Evil with various malevolent semi-psychic powers to boot. Then, due to a tie-in with one of the manifestations of her powers, you got Spooky Tape What Does Ya In.
posted by FatherDagon at 7:10 AM on August 25, 2016

Well so the whole thing in The Ring is that you DON'T die if you make a copy and share it

Wait... what? It's a chain letter?
posted by krinklyfig at 7:10 AM on August 25, 2016

Yes.
posted by maryr at 7:13 AM on August 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

I hope Vincent D'Onofrio saves the day with the weaponized velociraptors he deployed in Jurassic World.

I want him to save the day with a well-delivered rhetorical beatdown and an array of weaponized grimaces.
posted by octobersurprise at 7:13 AM on August 25, 2016 [3 favorites]

I saw Ringu with a bunch of grad students in Japanese history/religion/culture/art, so, even with the subtitles, they undoubtedly caught more than I did. But I have to say, I wasn't impressed or horrified. A good part of that was already knowing part of the plot and part of it was thinking "of course putting her bones to rest won't solve anything, that's a religious fix and this is a psychic curse," which is definitely my Western viewpoint intruding into what otherwise would have been a tense scene. There was nothing about smallpox that I can remember in the movie, as I know that would have caught my attention.

And there is a fix, something they showed at the end of Ringu- you show the film to someone near the edge of death/someone who doesn't mind sacrificing themselves for their family. I'm picturing something like the suicide booths in Soylent Green, only with the video replacing the gentle music and scenes of nature. You could automate it out and get it fixed in less than a month, guaranteed. Of course, playing it to a large audience would be a form of terrorism, something along the lines of Langford's BLIT.
posted by Hactar at 7:33 AM on August 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

More Ringo than Ringu.

Now I want a remake of Help! where Ringo accidentally stumbles across the Ring video and the Beatles spend the entire rest of the movie running in slapstick fashion from spooky Japanese horror girls.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:43 AM on August 25, 2016 [5 favorites]

Not a horror connosieur but I did like the original (American) version.

I was literally thinking, at the "lay the bones to rest" scene, "I'm so sick of ghosts who just want to be laid to rest. What does it matter to them?" So of course I liked the twist.

I also remember a review where a critic said it "played on the fears you have when you get videotapes from unknown sources." I think film critics may live in a slightly different world than us.

I never thought of it as a disease metaphor before, but I think that's why it always seemed so silly to me. If you treat it rationally, like a disease, it's pretty tame. [ . . . ] because the 7-day clock resets with each new carrier, so any group of 52 people could effectively stave a particular "infection" off for a year. The CDC would clean that up in its sleep.

Obviously the horror is at the individual level, not the public health implications, but this is an interesting analysis.

I'd note the cunning part is that the infection lives in a non-human reservoir (video tapes). These are tough to stamp out. And some percentage of infected people may be making new reservoirs for future infection, whether they survive or not. Logically you're going to keep getting flare ups and they're going to become more common.
posted by mark k at 8:48 AM on August 25, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'm a pretty hardcore horror buff, and I also thought the American film was superior on pretty much every level. Ringu is fine and creepy, The Ring is one of the most effective horror movies of the decade, as well as conceptually much clearer and more well-defined. Or, on a more basic level, Ringu is creepy but didn't scare me or make me think much of it after seeing it, The Ring made it hard to sleep at night. For several nights.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 8:57 AM on August 25, 2016

My favorite ending to Ringu is the one in The Cabin In The Woods. Now Kiko's spirit will live on in the happy frog! Yay!

And then the world's destroyed by the Elder Gods. Happy ending.

(Sorry about the spoilers for a six-year-old movie.)
posted by panglos at 8:58 AM on August 25, 2016 [7 favorites]

Wait... what? It's a chain letter?

I suppose the updated version would have a guy crawling out of my laptop to tell me that he is the former secretary of the treasury for Nigeria, and needs help with moving his money out if the country. ..
posted by happyroach at 9:02 AM on August 25, 2016 [8 favorites]

Well so the whole thing in The Ring is that you DON'T die if you make a copy and share it

Here you go, Teddy Ruxpin, I have something for you to watch while I'm in the other room. Then we're going to make a little trip over to Good Will.
posted by SpacemanStix at 1:17 PM on August 25, 2016

I think Ring/Ringu also depends on what you're comparing. The overall Ring series in Japan is better than the Ring series in the US. (Unless Rings is somehow good, which seems unlikely). Its also more of a stand-alone film here (given how terrible Ring 2 was) versus an ongoing pop-culture thing in Japan (more like Nightmare on Elm Street or Friday the 13th). So in terms of "pop culture franchise" the Japanese one is clearly superior. I'm not enough of a film critic to decide between Ringu and Ring, I liked them both. (I've seen both American ones, unfortunately, and most of the Japanese ones except Sadako 3D 2 and Sadako vs Kayako).

Sadako 3D is where they finally ditch the VHS and move into digital video (mostly smartphones). No phone calls either, if I remember correctly.
posted by thefoxgod at 2:32 PM on August 25, 2016

Now that I've seen the trailer, I feel fairly confident that seeing the entire movie is unwarranted.

Now that I've seen the trailer, I feel fairly confident that seeing even just the trailer was unwarranted.
I have to agree with Brocktoon, this does look terrible.
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 4:29 PM on August 25, 2016

Wait... what? It's a chain letter?

I suppose the updated version would have a guy crawling out of my laptop to tell me that he is the former secretary of the treasury for Nigeria, and needs help with moving his money out if the country. ..

Or perhaps it's a vanishing leprechaun, who reappears RIGHT BEHIND YOU.
posted by Strange Interlude at 6:56 AM on August 26, 2016