+- CDIH (https://www.cdih.net/cdih)
+-- Forum: General Discussion and Entertainment (https://www.cdih.net/cdih/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: Entertainment Unlimited (https://www.cdih.net/cdih/forumdisplay.php?fid=11)
+--- Thread: The ring (/showthread.php?tid=3801)
Pages:
1
2
- Teenweek - 10-15-2002
I can't wait to see this movie. It looks really good and has gotten great reviews so far from critics.
![[Image: 501131.jpg]](http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/151/501131.jpg)
- Arthur Dent - 10-15-2002
It's a remake of a Japanese film that was highly acclaimed. I'm looking forward to it.
- Meatwad - 10-17-2002
that movie looks awesome :thumbs-up:
- ftard - 10-18-2002
The japanese version was great, very scary with no gore really, that is seen anyway. but the remake will be great too.
- kindred - 10-18-2002
I saw the commercial for it last night. I love scary/thriller movies, so I really want to see this one. I just couldn't tell what it was about from the few commercials I saw!
- Faceman - 10-19-2002
HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!! What a fucking creepy movie. I really dont think I'm going to be sleeping tonight. :-( There are a ton of scary images and jumps and bumps to keep you interested throughout the movie and the ending is just killer, with a nice twist added. If you want to be scared or are looking for a good halloween movie to see, I reccommend this one highly
- Luna - 10-19-2002
Quote:HOLY SHIT!!!!!!!!!!! What a fucking creepy movie. I really dont think I'm going to be sleeping tonight.Whoa! Now I have to see this movie. :firebounce:
- Teenweek - 10-20-2002
i loved this movie. the ending was oh my fucking god. I cannot believe that just happened. Of course I had a running commentary the whole movie by a family of schwooggies who feel a reason to yell at the screen. During scary parts people ended up laughing. The funniest line was while seeing the video if someone's phone rings now, I'm leaving.
- Teenweek - 10-21-2002
Question. CONTAINS SPOILERS***** Don't read if you did not see the movie. If you saw the movie please help with these questions.
|
|
|
|
|
V
1. How did the boy know everything about the girl? He knew a week before the first girl died at the beginning.
2. Why did everyone who saw the video scratch out people's faces?
3. Did you notice about 3/4 during the movie, that all of a sudden when they switched scenes you caught a very quick glimpse of the ring?
4. I understand Aidan and Naomi Watts lived because they made copies of the tape. I don't understand why though. What was the significance of taping it that caused them to still live? And why did Aidan say that they have to show it to someone else now? The only possible explanation I can get is that the ring is a circle and a circle never ends. It is infinite. What would happen now if they destroy both tapes and do not show it to anyone?
- Faceman - 10-21-2002
1. never fully explained but a 6th sense kind of thing could be happening. I think he said that the girl talks to him, tells him things but I could be wrong.
2. again, never fully explained. also never explained was the distortion in their pictures after they saw the video
3. it was there a couple of times. Sort of like the bat symbol used during the television show to seperate scenes(sorry for the lame example, but it's the first thing that came to my mind when reading it)
4. That my friend, is why sequels are created. In the original japanese version there are 3 parts, ringu only being the first. Don't know if they are going through with all 3 parts in America but it would be interesting to see the further advance of this story.
- Teenweek - 10-22-2002
I found something on a messageboard and this person gives some good ideas to a lot of questions I had. ANd also makes you ask more questions about the film. After reading this person's responses, I definitely need to see this movie again.
If you saw this movie, her explanations are definitly worth reading. Face I am not saying she is right, but it seems to answer a bunch of our questions. There are some major spoilers in these questions for people who did not see it, so don't read this post if you have plans on seeing the movie.
HOW WAS SAMARA CONCEIVED AND BORN?
Anna Morgan couldn't have kids. (Mr. Morgan said: "My wife was neevr supposed to have children!") Why? I don't know. Maybe just bad luck. Maybe she was cursed. maybe Anna Morgan was herself soehow evil. But she and her husband "went away" and then came back with Samara. Now either Samara was adopted or she was their own child. I recal that when Noah was reading the medical records in that ancient record storage facility at the hospital, it listed multiple miscarriages in Anna's medical history. ANd then there was the birth certificate--it had Anna's name on it and then it said "Live birth" so I would presume it was Anna's natural child. HOWEVER--they "went away" in order to conceive the child. Where did they go? Was it a fertility clinic they went to? Was it a witch doctor on a island somewhere? Did they go to a Satanic church where Anna sold her soul in exchange for a child? These questions are not answered but they make you wonder.
WHY DID THE HORSES FEAR HER?
The horses evidently "sensed" something hideously evil about Samara. They wanted to flee as far from her as possible. They wanted to bolt and then gallop and gallop and gallop and gallop as many miles away from her as they could. The only problem with that is that they were on an island and so after barely half a mile of such gallopping the horses would suddenly find themselves in the bay. Now--horses can swim, but I guess the tide and the currents were too powerful and so the horses all tired and then drowned with each attempt to swim away from this island that was now infested with the evil-reeking presense of this little girl from Hell.
The entire island was impacted by the presense of this evil creature who LOOKED like a girl! Bad fishing years, rough winters. Remember the mentaly handicapped boy in the doctor's office? Was he the only child born mentally handicapped during those years when the girl was on the island?
HOW DID SHE MAKE THE PICTURES AND THE VIDEO?
She evidently had the ability to "will" these images into place on a variety of existing mediums. The pictures that the doctor was holding up--and which Noah later found in the file--appeared to be X-ray slides. She "willed" these images onto X-ray slides! It takes a blast of radiation to impact X-ray slide material like that. Can she "command' radiation particles?? As for the video tapes, she "willed" the images onto the magnetic medium of the video-tape. She had some sort of psychic something-or-other capability that was able to impact paper and also impact the wooden wall of the barn, and also impact the radiation-sensitive material of an X-ray slide, and also impact the magnetic strip of a video tape!
I suspect this whole thing with the imagery and her ability to manipulate these different visual mediums as her way of expressing herself is part of the "Japanese-ness" of this film. The Japanese culture is very enamored with visual artistry and from an early age children in Japan are taught how to draw on a more advanced level than American chidlren, and they are also taught how to be very good photographers at early ages. The manipulation for te sake of visual artistry the various mediums of pencils, pastels, crayons, ink, chalk, carbons, paper-cuttings, and photography are all very itensely trained into Japanese children.
WHAT SORT OF CREATURE WAS THIS LITTLE GIRL?
She said in the video-taped psychiatric session with the doctor:
DOCTOR: "But, Samara, you don't want to hurt anyone. Right?"
SAMARA: "Oh, but I do. I'm very sorry. But it's not going to stop. It will only spread."
She is a creature of evil, disguised as a human child! I suspect there is some significance in the name "Samara"--it is a Japanese word, I'm sure. What does it mean when translated into English? Can anyone find out?
WHAT HAPPENED AFTER THEY KILLED HER IN THE WELL?
Well even though her physical body died, her soul or her spirit or her inner-being did not.
She didn't ever "sleep."
The concept of "sleep" is a very spiritual one. When a person dies they are said to "fall asleep." But she did not. Her physical body died and then it rotted and it decayed there inside the well and then maggots (imagery from the evil video tape) were hatched all over her decaying body, and the maggots of course, turned into flies--millions and millions of flies 9the millions of flies flew up out of the well during the climactic scene when Noah and Rachael dropped the stone into the mouth of the well), but her spirit was still alive and awake and her spirit watched and endured the image of her own decaying body in the well.
Another significant thing is the concept of a "tomb." She was "entombed" in that well. And a tomb is a barrier between the living and the dead, a place where death and the rot and decay of death is isolated from the rest of the world.
WHY THE PHONE CALL RIGHT AFTER YOU HAVE VIEWED THE TAPE?
I don't know! But I suspect it is Samara's voice. She can manipulate the magnetic materials of a video tape and so I guess she can also manipulate the electronic signals that pass through a telephone line (please cross-reference some of the concepts laid out in The Mothman Prophecies ).
I also suspect that this whole story concept might very well be based upon a pre-existing urban legend that many a teenageer has whispered trepidatiously to other teenagers, and part of the original urban myth icluded the thing with the phone call. So, in my guestimate of the origins of the story, the author was just being true to the original details of the urban legend that first inspired him to write his novel back home in Japan in the 1990's.
WHY DOES MAKING A COPY AND HAVING ANOTHER PERSON VIEW IT EXEMPT YOU FROM DEATH?
Probably because at that point you are aligning yourself with "the message" and "the mission" and "the gospel" of this evil force. You are spreading the contagion. And this is your reward. It's a foolproof way of spreading it and spreading it and spreading it. Evil has institutued a curse, and also has built-in a few covenants into the mechanics of this curse as a trade-off of ensnaring hapless humans into the service of evil for the end-goal of spreading the evil. Like she said to the doctor in her video taped psychiatric session: "I'm sorry. It's only going to spread."
WHAT EVIL DOES SHE REPRESENT? WHOSE EVIL IS SHE CHAMPIONING?
I don't know whose mythos this picture of evil is modeled after. I am not familiar with Japanese concepts of the spirit realm, nor with their religious symbols or the key characters in their mythologies. Although there was a generic enough picture of evil represented here in this American version of the film to make it fit almost anyone's mythology, including Christian.
I again want to point people here at BOM, as I have done in an earlier post, to the deliberate imitation of the Linda Blair imagery in this film. The little girl Samara was always in a white, long-sleeved nightgown, just like Regan was in The Exorcist . And that final scene in Noah's studio, we saw her hair-covered face get uncovered and we saw a face that was just far too similar to Linda Blair's "Regan Posessed" face from that famous 1970's movie.
WHAT WAS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE TREE AND OTHER IMAGES?
Well, it was a Japanese maple tree for one thing. That imagery may have some symbolic significance in Japan that I am clueless on because I know so little about the culture. I suspect it is significant because of the etching of the tree burned into the inside wall of the barn. The tall ladder obviously had a pragmatic function behind it, but I also believe that tall ladders actually have a symbolism in Japan that we Westerners might be oblivious to. Also, the fact that it was a well--that is another thing that I believe has deep symbolism (pardon the pun!--not intended!) in the Japanese culture. (Anyone here ever read the Japanese children's story "Riki-Tiki-Tembo" as a kid? That story not only had a deep well in it, but it also had a long tall ladder in it too!) And the millipede--although a creepy thing to behold--has profound symbolism in various Eastern cultures because of its many legs. The fly was, of course, just one fly from the millions of flies that hatched as a result of millions of maggots that were crawling all over her rotting body in the tomb of the well.
WHY WERE PEOPLE'S FACES WARPED OUT DURING PHOTOGRAPHY OR VIDEOTAPING?
This might be a spiritual concept that is found in some cultures of the world concerning the taking of photographs. The Amish hold to some echoes of this concept as do Native Americans: to take a photo is to capture the essence of a person's soul. And victims of this video tape were having their souls assailed by some sort of a evil grip. Any normal camera was able to capture the rpesence of this contagion within a person's soul as well as the horse on board the ferry was able to sense it: video-tape victims who had the seven-day clocks ticking on them were all slowly decaying under the evil of this girl's "message".
Another concept is found almost exclusively in Japan. Here in the West we talk about how "The eye is the window to the soul." But in Japanese thought, it is the entire face that is this window. Here are some examples of Japanese expressions concerning the face: to have a "thick face" is to be a calloused person who is indifferent to the pain of others. To have a "dark face" is to be a person brooding in a depression of fear and turmoil. To have a "lucky face" is to simply be a lucky person who brings luck everywhere he goes. And in this movie, video-tape victims were sporting a "distorted face" which was somehow "infected" with the grip of evil.
I would also liken this photograph anomoly to the old vampire-reflection-in-the-mirror routine. Our human eyes are deceived by the vampire, but the mirror tells the truth about him: a vampire cannot cast a reflection because he has no soul. And here in this film, a video-victim's soul--which is seen in their face--casts a distorted image into a photo.
WHY THE NAMES?
"Noah" and "Rachael" are Biblical names. Aiden is an ancient Celtic name. I haven't researched the meanings of any of those names yet, but I suspect there is something there.
"Morgan" is the name of the first American breed of horse (the Morgan horse), as well as a name associated with great wealth in the history of this nation (consider that JP Morgan is one of the largest investment firms in the USA, as well as the Morgan-Stanley-Dean-Witter firm).
The name "Samara" means "maple tree"
Someone just told me that "samara" is the Japanese word for "maple tree" --and a Japanese maple tree was the species of tree focused on in the imagery in the film.
The maple tree was "on fire" in the X-ray slides that Samara etched her psychic images onto. And the maple tree was described by Rachel as "glowing red like fire" when the setting sun shone through its leaves into the window of Cabin #12. And the maple tree was the tree etched into the wooden wall of the barn hidden behind the wallpaper.
So, the little girl Samara is the human incarnation of a burning, flaming maple tree!
But she was cast into the depths of a dark watery well.
I am wondering if the Japanese maple might have some sort of spiritual or symbolic or historical significance in Japan. The holly tree has spiritual signficance in Western European folk lore as a source of magic and healing. The olive tree is the symbol of Israel, and an olive branch is a symbol of peace. The oak tree in Anglo-legend is a tree of strength and reslience. The willow tree of North America is believed by Native Americans to have magical healing properties (it's where we get aspirin from). So I wonder if the maple tree has some sort of spiritual symbolism in Japan, and I wonder what the flames mean.
WHY DIDN'T SHE DIE WHEN HER MOTHER SUFFOCATED HER?
Becasue her mother wasn't terribly experienced at murder. Her mother suffocated her just enough to make her pass out, but not enough to kill her. I believe it takes about seven to nine minutes of sustained oxygen deprivation to completely asphixiate someone into actual death. So the girl was merely unconcscious. Then when the mother tossed the unconscious child into the well, she eventually awoke in the water below and looked up to see the horror of the cap stone sliding into place like the moon encompassing the sun in a total solar eclipse. Then her physical body survived for just seven more days worth of terror and clawing at the walls and hunger and infections in her feet and vermin crawling everywhere, and then her body died. But her spirit lived on in that "cold dark place" as Aiden described it.
WERE RACHAEL AND AIDEN NOW FREE OF SAMARA AFTER HAVING MADE COPIES AND SHOWING THEM TO OTHERS?
I don't know. Perhaps the grasp Samara had on each of them was now broken and they were no longer bound up in her trap of death. Or else perhaps they were now eternal slaves of the undying curse of Samara and her video. I am curious about whether or not Rachael and Aiden might now be what equates to a sort of an odd cousin to vampires: if you hold a mirror to a vampire they cast no reflection, just as if you take a photograph of a Samara video-victim their face is distorted. AND the Samara video-victims seem to have an odd impact on the sensibilities of horses who are nearby. So, even though the seven days have gone by and even though neither Rachel nor Aiden are going to die now, are Rachel and Aiden still unable to be photographed without distortion? And are Rachael and Aiden still sources of adversity to horses? If they are still unphotographable, and if they are still unpalateble to horses, then I would say that even though they are not going to die (at least not from the seven-day curse) that the two of them are now eternally trapped in a netherworld of spiritual slavery to the curse of Samara. The two of them are no longer free spirits but are instead Samara's property, Samara's lackeys who will do her bidding. Samara is perhaps building an army of slaves. And Rachael and Aiden are just two more dupees who have made copies, distributed them, and are now hers forever.
WHO WAS THE MAN THAT AIDEN ENCOUNTERED IN THE RAIN?
Someone said earlier that there was a serial killer who was instrumental in the original script, and yet that character was eliminated in the final cut of the film. I would guess that the man in the rain was that serial killer. Is he of palpable significance in this final version of the film? I don't know. But again, I guess we'll find out in the sequal.
Edited By Teenweek on 1035292194
- Lou Weed - 10-25-2002
I just finished watching a bootleg copy of The Ring and now every orfice in my body is bleeding..wait I think thats from something else.
![[Image: ring1.jpg]](http://louweed.50megs.com/images/ring1.jpg)
Edited By Lou Weed on 1036261758
- Lou Weed - 11-02-2002
Anyone see the Jap orginal of this?
- LyricalGomez - 11-02-2002
Quote:Anyone see the Jap orginal of this?
Quote:The japanese version was great, very scary with no gore really, that is seen anyway. but the remake will be great too.
- Lou Weed - 11-02-2002
Yeah the "Japanese version was great" explains a lot. Remember Gomez it's quality of the post not quantity..Repeat that before you post quality not quantity..quality not quantity..quality not quantity...
- Mad - 11-02-2002
Quote:Repeat that before you post quality not quantity..quality not quantity..quality not quantity...
- LyricalGomez - 11-02-2002
Beat me too it
Quote:Yeah the "Japanese version was great" explains a lot.
Since you want to argue the point, where in this wonderful sentence did you ask how it was? Nowhere, good job assmonkey. Next time specify waht you want answered, we can't look into the desolate wasteland that is your mind.
- Lou Weed - 11-02-2002
Quote:wahta little flustered are we cum stain
- LyricalGomez - 11-02-2002
Big suprise, dodged the fact that I pointed out your mistake...Good one
- Lou Weed - 11-02-2002
It's guys like you that make trolling enjoyable enjoy the show.