Ring
The plot is a sloppy, but wonderfully entertaining mix of two movie tropes, government experimentation on psychics and a vengeful ghost who curses all do a certain thing. The story is fairly interesting, but is hindered by its lack of explanation and massive plot holes. It mainly consists of our two main characters doing things for no apparent reason. The characters have barely any personality to them, they merely go through the motions of the nonsensical plot and interact in very strange ways. For example, most of the movie Ryuji is very nice to his ex-wife but doesn’t seem to hold any of the former love he had during their marriage. Yet not only does he sporadically say something awful, like that the entire family should die or that their son should have never been born, but they also try at the end to rekindle their love, as Asakawa calls him her husband. None of the few characteristics they have are consistent throughout the movie. Somehow, this movie was decently paced. I felt that if they actually explained, it wouldn’t even have to be much longer. There are plenty of moments that would be perfect for a conversation between characters or a debrief on what their plan was and why they were doing it. The world was not at all relevant to the story so it wasn’t really developed. It had some history to it, like the experiments and Shizuko’s backstory, but really nothing significant. I can’t think of a single lesson this movie made an attempt to teach. I thought they would focus a bit more on Asakawa’s neglect of her child or Sadako’s reasoning for what she does, but it boils down so heavily to good vs. evil and no questions asked. The cinematography was pretty clean, for the few frightening scenes they did well placing the camera to add suspense and editing the sequences. It wasn’t really anything incredibly special, good or bad. I didn’t really have any emotional attachment to any of the characters so I was unable to empathize for them too heavily, but there were a few scenes were I did get a bit scared. This movie really didn’t have many horror scenes, which is odd for a horror movie, but the ones they did have were satisfactory. This movie kicked off a massive trend of horror films in Asia, so it being one of the first of its kind in its respective region is noteworthy. Many of the plot points are basic however and have been seen in many other stories, but I do believe there were certainly innovative elements to this movie. The dialogue was nearly irredeemable. At the very least, it was humorous and not dry and boring, but it was so pointless and so unrealistic it was laughable. Nothing said in this movie did much to explain anything, it was mostly just background noise. Overall, despite my previous cynical statements, I loved this movie. It was terrible in a shamefully fun way and I really can’t explain why I liked it so much.
Plot - 6
Characters - 0
Pacing - 7
Worldbuilding - 5
Themes - 0
Animation or Cinematography - 7
Emotional Impact - 3
Uniqueness - 7
Dialogue - 1
Overall Enjoyment - 10
Total: 46%