The Ring

To make up for that rant I just wrote, I want to talk about a re-make I thought was good: the American version of The Ring. Not only was it good, but it incorporates into the plot what I take to be a bit of an editorial comment akin to my rant below. If you've not seen the movie, don't keep reading.

For much of the movie, we don't really know the cause of all this evil shit. There's a weird tape, there's something about water, and something about utter terror. When the hero of the movie investigates the weird tape further, she finds this young girl with weird psychic powers who is dead down in the bottom of a well. Predictably, this young girl had a bad childhood, and was hated and killed and everything. So, and this is the twist I think makes the movie great, the hero is convinced that if she just unearths the body, this evil force will let go, and the curse will be lifted, and the child's spirit will finally be free to go to heaven or whatever. This is just the sort of pat over-explanation that tends to ruin re-makes and other movies. And The Ring tricks you that it will follow that formula with a fake ending at this point. Then it turns out the hero did something terribly wrong, because now she has unearthed this evil creature who isn't grateful, isn't set free to rise to the heavens, but is let loose to do evil in a much more direct form. Ha! The motivation of this evil girl has transcended the clichéd, too-neat explanation most movies are too ready to ascribe to evil characters.

Now, granted, for the same reasons as outlined in the previous post, it is a lot less scary once you actually see the girl, since the visual impact can't match the terrible things you'd imagined without seeing. But that twist, the fake ending, really injects the movie with enough energy to drive to the real ending. And the mystery of evil is never solved, but remains a sort of brick wall which must be dealt with as it is and can't be liquidated by any pop-psychology bullshit. At the end of the movie, I am left with the hope that the next two viewers of that tape will be Dr. Phil and George Lucas.