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mystery

The Ring * Gore Verbinsky * 2002

I have seen all four of the Japanese Ringus and was still curious about the American remake of the original. It took a while before I got to see it. However the American version is different, it is still a very nice horror/thriller. It isn’t as dark and claustrophobic as the Japanese version. The story is familiar, there is killer video, when you see it, you get a phonecall and die after a week. The video itself (the images, themes, etc.) is more worked out than in the original version, but the story largely remained the same, but where oh where did the story with the horses come from? The atmosphere is good, the acting too, overall more American of course, but like I said, still worth watching.

Ringu 0: Baasudei * Norio Tsuruta * 2000

After the tremendous succes of “Ringu” (an American remake even!) there was a sequel “Ringu 2” which I have yet to see (but will within the next days) and after the sequel there was a “prequel” “Ringu 0”. Chronologically this film comes before the original. There are several Ringu books that the films are based on, so however all these sequels are very Hollywoodish it is still somehow bearable. “Ringu 2” is by the original director, but “Ringu 0” is by the director of the wonderfull “Kakashi” (see elsewhere), but I found that out after I saw it, so I didn’t have too high hopes when I watched this film.

But, Ringu 0 proves to be about as good as the original. Not so dark in filming, but the same dense atmosphere, dark sounds that makes you definately have to see this on DVD and a slow building-up towards a great ending. The story is that of the girl from the well/drain that caused the curse. You can see how this shy girl moves to Tokio, makes problems that she can’t help and how she ends in the drain. The film is wonderfully made that you keep wondering what how when and especially why upto the last minutes. If you liked the original, see this one, if you haven’t seen any “The Ring” yet, be sure to see the originals!

Ringu 2 * Hideo Nakata * 1999

After the succesfull Ringu, Nakata made a sequel and later a ‘prequel’ was made by another director. I thought Ringu 1 is okay, but I suppose my expectations where too high, Ringu 0 was better than expected, but 2 is just alright. The story continues where part 1 ends. The people who found Sadako in the well are lost of insane and new people investigate the curse. Nice to see if you saw the other two, but the least of the three. Oh, my advice: watch them in the order they were made! That is Ringu, Ringu 2 and then Ringu 0.

Ring: Spiral * George Lida * 1999

For those who still don’t believe it: “this is the film that was shot at the same time as the original Ring and is therefor the only real Ring 2”. I had heard of this ‘original Ring 2’ before which was regarded so terrible that a descent follow-up had to be made. I can’t find this title in the Internet Movie Database. The info above comes from the internetpage of the videostore.

This Ring is indeed the least of the four Japanese films, but still not as horrible as some will make you believe. It is more of a drama which very slowly evolves towards the dark thriller that we came to watch the Ring ‘series’ for. The story comes after the first Ring of course. The dead doctor isn’t dead and flashbacks go back to Ring 0. No need to tell you about the killer-videotape I suppose? Just watch it if you have already seen the rest. When I see the English version of the first Ring, I have seen them all…

Ring(u) * Hideo Nakata * 1998

What do you get when you mix The Blair Witch Project, Tesis, Videodrome, Odisjon/Audition and a bit of David Lynch? Indeed, a Japanese cult-horror. I had never heard of this film until last november when the boyfriend of my youngest sister told me about it. In the meantime it seems that “Ringu 2” and “Ringu 0” (which chronologically is supposed to be seen before this one) and on top of all, “Ringu” (just “Ring” on international dvds by the way) has been remade in America as “The Ring” and this US-version will have its cinema-premiere in the Netherlands coming Thursday (13/2/03). According to the critics, the American version is as good as the original and the word says that this is the most frightening film since the first Blair Witch. Well then.

“Ringu” is about a videotape-curse. People who see a certain video get a phonecall immediately after and they hear that they have only one week to live. This becomes a story to scare friends at school, but a tv-reporter is going to check out this story when two youngsters die with a horrible expression on their faces a week after they are said to have seen the film. Quite rapidly she finds a videotape on a holiday-resort, watches it, gets the call and asks her ex-husband to help her out to solve the mystery. He also sees it, doesn’t receive a call, but does get the weird visions that the watchers of the tape get in their last week. Then the search for the origin leads to a young girl who was daughter of a strange woman with psychic powers. The little girl could wish people dead and when she was murdered by her father, a curse came forth from her death.

The film reminded me of the Spanish “Tesis” because of the hunt for a killer-videotape by experts on the plane of video. Also the cult-film “Videodrome” has a similar idea as “Ringu”, videos take over the lifes of their victims. “Odisjon/Audition” I only added because this is also a film in Japanese as is “Ringu”. Then “Ringu” is supposed to be extremely frightening without gruesome images, like in “The Blair Witch”. This is partly true. There indeed are some quite heavy scenes in this film, but still I have to see my first real scary film. Further the film is quite dark and the video-images are used a bit as in Lynch’s “Lost Highway”. Also the dark drones add to the effect giving “Ringu” a nice atmosphere.

All in all though I didn’t like “Ringu” too much. It is nice, but not overtly original and definately not as scary as people say. Still a film that you want to see if you like horrors without thousands of liters of blood and also if you like a dark atmosphere in a film.

Riget (The Kingdom) II * Lars von Trier * 1997

E 20 for three videos isn’t too much money, right? Too bad that I had to get a horrible dvd-version of the first series in order to get the whole thing (reviewed elsewhere). Three videos exactly the way you get the thing on tv, nothing more, nothing less, PERFECT!. So this time I DID get to see the intros with the swamp, the hilarious song and intro AND Lars’ stories at the end of every episode.

The Kingdom I is still pretty much of a soap-series with some strange elements, but it builds up to an extremely crazy end. No waiting when you have everything at home, so I immediately continued with these second series (of three years later!). These are MUCH darker, crazier and absurd than series I. Again I am not going to tell you too much about this ghost-story-hospital-soap. If you like the bizare kind of tv-making and you haven’t seen The Kingdom, be sure to see it! Also the second series have a very open end, but I don’t believe Von Trier will ever make a third series. <5>

Riget (The Kingdom) * Lars von Trier * 1994

A while ago I bought Kingdom II very cheap on video (see review elsewhere) and the search started for Kingdom I on video. It WILL be repressed some time, but it is currently sold out. After several months waiting I decided not to wait for the double-video (in one box) but buy the rather expensive English dvd-version. A BIG DISAPPOINTMENT for lovers of these brilliant series by Lars von Trier! You get two dvd’s. The first has episodes 1 and 2 and the second 3 to 5. The first dvd also has some documentary which doesn’t add much. Of course the series are brilliant and there is nothing wrong with the quality, but the makers of the dvd made a few horrible mistakes! When putting dvd1 in your player you get some kind of intro, nice but not necessary. Then a menu in which you can choose to play “episode one and two”, “episode one”, “episode two”, “episode three to five” or the documentary. Of course I wasn’t planning on chosing the first option, because then I would miss the stories of the director that come after every episode. To my major disapproval the episodes start immediately. Not the intro with the chloride-swamp and the story of the building of the hospital and no silly song! At the end you jump back to the menu in the last second of the episode, so no story by Lars and even no credits! What on earth have the producers of this dvd been thinking? What is the use of being able to watch the episodes joint together? You are not able to chose subtitles or even watch without them. Why the hell did they leave out the intro and the end? WHAT A SHAME!!

To the series then. Of course this is one of the best tv-series ever. A soap-series about a hospital in the vein of ER, but with a sick twist. Strange ghost-stories, insane characters and unexpected twists. I am not going to say more, you will have to watch it and love it (but preferable another version!). <4 for the series>

Resurrection * Russell Mulcahy * 1999

A friends project it seems. Christopher Lambert (Highlander, etc.) writes the story for a film and asks Mulcahy (Highlander, etc.) to direct it. “Ressurection” proves to be a “Se7en” copy.

Prudhomme (Lambert in the main part of his own film) is a police officer investigating a series of gruesome murders. During the investigation he is contacted by the killer and gets too deeply involved in the case of events. The killer proves to have an agenda based on his strict Christian faith. The film is pretty grim, the killings are shown very gruesome and Prudhomme brakes his mind over the symbolism of the killings. Nothing we haven’t seen before. Also “Resurrection” isn’t as cleverly written as “Se7en” (even though I had figured that one out before the end), so there are no real surprises. Overall an amusing film, but with a bit too high pretentions.

Ravenous * Antonia Bird * 1999

I have seen this film on cheap DVD several times and didn’t know whether or not to buy it. Now the doubting is over, since the BBC showed it last weekend. However my tv-guide says the film is good, I find it rather boring myself. Still, there are some nice sides to “Ravenous”.

The story plays in the 17th century and a group of men is sent out to the snowy Callifornia where they find a half-frozen man in front of their door. He tells a story of cannibalism and a few man go out to find a possible surviving woman. The film begins as an adventure/drama and goes via thriller to a more horror-like film. The story is unconvincing and the film is not very scary. Funny is the happy music when there should actually be scary music. The strange choices for music is actually the best part of the film.

The Prisoner (series) * George Markstein & Patrick McGoohan

‘Where am I?’ – ‘In the village.’
‘What do you want?’ – ‘We want information.’
‘Whose side are you on?’ – ‘That would be telling.’
‘We want information. Information, information’
‘You won’t get it!’
‘By hook or by crook, we will’
‘Who are you?’ – ‘I’m the new Number Two.’
‘Who is Number One?’ – ‘You are Number Six’
‘I am not a number. I am a free man!’
(manic laughter)

The Prisoner TV series are so old that you have to look for people to remember them. The series was first broadcasted in 1967 en 1968. In came in a flood of secret agent series such as The Saint or The Avengers and after Danger Man in which Patrick McGoohan also played a very special secret agent. Apparently McGoohan wanted something more, since he is not only one of the inventors, but also a director for the series (the last episode, the strangest of them all). I never really knew about the series even though it was smacked around my ears constantly. The “The Girl Who Was… Death” cd of Devil Doll is one big The Prisoner ode and this was even mentioned to me once. Colleagues mentioned it and eventually Collin Cleary wrote a lengthy review of the series in Tyr journal volume one of 2002 that I only got this year. That was the limit, I started to look around and bought myself the series. You can get a pretty expensive American box, an also pretty expensive UK box and the also pretty expensive separate five DVDs. The first four DVDs (I got the separate ones) contain four episodes each, the last DVD the last episode, an alternative version of another episode, a documentary and some other things. The other DVDs have some extras as well.
To the series then. Patrick McGoohan is a nameless secret agent who resigns. This is shown at the beginning of every episode. Because of his resignation, McGoohan is kidnapped and brought to “The Village”, a community seemly with the only purpose to get information from people (mostly secret agents who resigned). In The Village people have no names, but numbers. Number 2 is the outwardly leader of The Village and a new number 2 appears in (almost) every episode. The Prisoner is number 6. In every episode the leader of The Village comes up with a new way of trying to get “the priceless information” from number 6’s head. This mostly involves psychological experiments involving futuristic machines, drugs, hypnosis, etc. This results in marvelously weird situations in which number six always comes out as ‘the winner’. Therefor in the end, he is granted “the gift of individuality”.
In the series you can clearly see some critical views on modern society, democracy and science. Cleary has written magnificently about various elements in The Prisoner. There are -by the way- many strange elements to the series, such as a big white ball that comes out of the sea to punish people, the fact that you never get to know “who are the prisoners and who are the warders”, the strange machine in the control room, the eye-like cameras, weird characters, etc., etc. I think for these things the series have been seen as The X-Files and Twin Peaks of earlier decades. I don’t really agree with this, because The Prisoner is quite different from either series. The strange elements and sometimes the atmosphere (and characters) may remind especially of David Lynch’s masterpiece, but The Prisoner looks much more like James Bond to me than like Twin Peaks.
In any case. Even though the series are considerably older than myself, they are in colour and look “fresh as ever”. They are wonderfully shot, didn’t get oldfashioned and still highly enjoyable today. It is a series that make you think, “what do they mean”, “who is number 1”, “why doesn’t he just…”. They got a great sense of humour, recognisable situations, but also completely over-the-top scenes, philosophy and action. You can lend it to you parents who may watch it as James Bond, you can discuss it with your friends or on the many internet sites dedicated to The Prisoner. It seems that after the DVD release the popularity is raising a little and not without reason. The Prisoner is a magnificent, 17 times 50 minutes of TV. In my opinion maybe not as good as Twin Peaks, but probably a very agreeable second personal place in TV history. Buy and enjoy!