n January 1998, an small horror film called Ringu (The Ring) captured the imagination of Japanese audiences with its frightening imagery and rich mythology. The film quickly became one of the most successful horror film franchises in the history of Japanese cinema, spawning a sequel, a prequel, a television series and even comic books. Now, four years later, director Gore Verbinski brings the story to American audiences with a remake, also entitled The Ring.
This film represents only the third major feature for the director, who started out making commercials and short films. After achieving modest success with his feature debut, Mouse Hunt, starring Nathan Lane, Verbinski went on to direct The Mexican with Julia Roberts, Brad Pitt and James Gandolfini. With The Ring, Verbinski takes on much darker and more serious themes than his previous work.
As in the original, the story follows an investigative reporter as she unravels the clues leading to the origin of a mysterious videotape that causes the death of anyone who watches it within seven days. For the role of Rachel, the reporter, Verbinski was looking for a talented yet unknown actress who could believably portray the character's arc from neglectful mother to crusading protector. He found all of those qualities in Australian actress Naomi Watts. Fresh from the success of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, Watts was looking for a different sort of character when she read the script
for The Ring. She felt drawn to Rachel, an independent and strong woman who is also flawed.
Verbinski and Watts recently spoke with Science Fiction Weekly about the latest incarnation of The Ring, which opened on Oct. 18.
What kind of pressure did you feel in remaking a film that was so popular in Japan?
Verbinski: I think when you remake a movie you try not to mess it up. I think the original
movie worked really well in certain places and there's part of it that's different. We're not dealing
with the ESP aspect to the original movie or the volcano. Choices were made in this case to emphasize the more viral aspects of the tape. I think it's very important for me to try not to take away from what worked well in the original movie. ... There's something wonderful about an outside perspective on the horror genre, which has a real history in American cinema. And I think there was a wonderful minimalism to the original movie that I felt was very important to keep.
Watts: Yes, it's a very bold move to do a remake of a movie, but even though it was such a huge phenomenon in Japan it was still fairly obscure to the rest of the world. And I know that in certain demographics or, you know, cult worlds, it was huge, too, no matter where you are in the world. But not too many people knew about it, so it wasn't like we were doing a classic that was internationally phenomenal that everybody would be seeing again. So I tried not to pay too much attention to that and just take it for what it was and enjoy.
How did this project initially come to you, and what made you decide to do it?
Verbinski: They just sent me the tape—a really bad-quality tape, which was horrifying. I don't know if you've seen the original movie, but I loved it. And that tape came with the offer.
Watts: It was the character that drew me to this project. It's a genre film, and you get all those moments that you get in a genre film, but you get a little bit more. I think it's more psychological. And the character has her own personal journey to go through, and I particularly liked it for that reason. Rachel starts out as a flawed person and not the greatest mother. She's not asking the questions, she's a little bit driven and focused on what she thinks is the right thing to do, which is work, work, work, survive, survive and provide for my child. But it's only after all the drama and the chaos happens that she realizes that it's not just about that. It's about spending time and asking
the questions and recognizing what your child needs before he states it.
Verbinski: Naomi, I just think she's a tremendous talent. She's not worried about how audiences perceive her, so she earns her performance. I think it's very important for the genre, particularly in this case, with a character who's not a very good mother, not immediately likable. I think it's important to have that character played by an actor who can really earn your respect throughout the movie. And to me, Naomi has that range. She can play very real.
Did you consider casting an actress with a more familiar name in the lead role?
Verbinski: There were discussions very early on, because I think there's always a temptation for marquee value when you're making a movie, and movies cost money. [But] the star of this movie is the concept of this movie. ... I think Naomi is a great choice, because there isn't a lot of audience expectation for the plot. In movies in general, but horror movies in particular, you suffer if you're able to watch them from a more comfortable place. I think there's comfort in somebody you recognize and somebody you can distill and categorize into a character. And I think that that process of not immediately liking a character in a film, but slowly coming to terms with that character throughout the story, creates a proximity for the audience. If you achieve that, then you're able to access a different part of the brain. So horror movies are stories and psychological experiments at the same time.
Naomi, did you watch the original film when you heard you were being cast in the remake?
Watts: Yes, I did. I saw it once. I read the script and I really liked the script. I got excited about it, and then I managed to get hold of the copy of the Japanese version. It was particularly difficult to find as I was shooting a film in the south of Wales. The video store people looked at me blankly.
And when I got hold of it, I was in my hotel room alone and watching it on a very small TV monitor, and I remember being pretty freaked out. I just saw it the once, and that was enough to get me excited about doing it. But then, after that, I didn't want to look at it too much, because when you're doing a remake, I think it can be dangerous, because seeing how the other actor played the
role could corrupt your own ideas or take you in a direction that's not exactly where you would have planned to go.
After the tremendous success of Mulholland Drive, do you feel any additional pressure to prove yourself in your next project?
Watts: All that attention that happened last year from Mulholland Drive was wonderful, and it got lots of praise and awards and nice notices and stuff. So there's enormous pressure for your second film. You feel like you really have to deliver again, and people are watching you, thinking, "Was it a fluke? Did she get a great role? Is she able to do it again?" So I'm very nervous about people's reaction, but I'm excited, too, and I'm very proud of the film.
What was it like seeing the film with an audience for the first time?
Watts: Seeing it the other night, I was kind of shocked, because it's so hard to be objective. And then with all the pressure, like I just explained. I look at myself and think, oh, that was the day the genie broke down or whatever. You don't really get lost in the story like an ordinary audience member. But I did find myself leaping at the odd occasion and then kind of getting the giggles, thinking, I know the beats, I know the script back to front, and feeling a bit embarrassed for having such a reaction. But my way to judge it is to look around and see how the audience members are reacting and if they're shifting. The guy next to me was not only shifting but doing this [covers her hands with her eyes] and talking to his girlfriend the whole time. And I loved that. It got me really excited. It makes me feel like we did our job.
What was the most difficult scene in the film for you?
Watts: I'd have to say when I found out that my son was watching the tape. And then again, when I was totally exasperated at the end. ... I really felt like I was touching on melodrama, and you're just going for it, and you're just like shrieking, and you're always afraid that it's too much, but it really warrants that in the story. It's really about trusting Gore, because we've got to make sure that
everything is paced well up to that point so it isn't melodrama. Obviously, it's a very, very dramatic
situation, and she's reached that point where she just can't take it anymore. So you're doing it on the
day and you're just always concerned how it's going to play out in the structure of the story.
And then also, I'd have to say that the horses on the boat was particularly [difficult]. I mean, I felt
terrible for the horses, but we had the animal people there who were watching very closely and telling us what we could and couldn't do, and everyone on the set was incredibly quiet and respectful in order not to spook them anymore than they were already being spooked. ... But it was great. I think it's a pretty powerful scene.
Do you think this film will be as successful as the original?
Watts: I feel like I'm in safe hands. The Dreamworks people are really smart. We did a lot of script changes while we were shooting, and we shot a few different endings, and we didn't know what we were going to use, and the way they've played it out I think is really smart, and I love the way it ends. It's a little bit up in the air, and what are you supposed to think? So I feel inspired and encouraged by that.
Verbinski: It was a very unique phenomenon. I don't think it's something you can count upon repeating. I think there's that aspect that it is a contemporary tale, that we don't have control over our lives. I think a lot of horror movies are classic, if we can categorize them. There's something about The Ring that resonates. It wasn't made by Hollywood, which is constantly looking for ideas to conjure into a horror movie. And the fact that it came from a different perspective is kind of unique.
How do you go about adapting such a popular film for an entirely different audience while staying true to the original?
Verbinski: I think there's a lot of trying to keep what did work well, and I think as a
director there's two answers to that question. One is, as a director, I wish I could make a movie once
and then look at it and make it again. It's really nice to have Hideo Nakata's template. We talked about the movie. When I saw it, there were particular things I really enjoyed about it and things that I wanted to change. I think every director wants to change a movie after they've finished it. In terms of the popularity of the movie, I think it's inevitable to get persecuted for remaking a film that people love. I think there's pride of ownership. I felt that Wages of Fear is a great movie and I despised the remake, so I know what that's like. I kind of expect that, but we still had a great time making the movie, and it's a great story. And there's a lot of people who didn't see the original that I hope will see this movie.
How did you create and interpret the unsettling images we see on the actual tape?
Verbinski: Watching these images, how do they affect you? That was important to me. The tape is something that is promised throughout the movie, so I felt it was important that there was enough there that resonated. And yet, in our movie, they have to also serve as clues. So we had the burden of just creating something that felt abstract but then also had to work in a concrete fashion and also had to be justifiable from the story about the child.
The tape had to sort of function on three levels. It had to be disturbing on its own, and it had to provide a series of clues, and then it had to also have some resonance to the author ... in the movie. I just started with images that I found horrific, and then we built the tape long and kept reducing and reducing and tried to avoid the temptation to make it narrative. It's amazing how when images fall together how quickly they start to tell a story even when you're trying not to.
Horror movies have become so familiar to modern audiences, how do you make something original without ignoring the conventions of the genre?
Verbinski: We didn't want to play to the sort of noir aspects of the genre. The language of horror is so steeped in cliches because it's just been reinvented so many times it's hard to set a shot and not feel like it's a shot that's in someone else's movie when you're making a horror film. So you kind of have to celebrate that but at the same time try to reinvent it where you can.
[Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli] and I discussed the removal of shadows to try to keep the characters feeling like they're floating a little bit, in space. I find films like The Tenant, where there's a kind of nauseousness you get in the process of the movie, and a lot of that comes from the composition. In this case, we really emphasized lighting and the oppressive nature of the softer light, overcast skies and rain. It's not a movie that evolves into the light, it's a movie that ends where it begins.
The opening of the film has the feel of a teen slasher, but it diverges radically from there. Was that an intentional comment on the horror genre?
Verbinski: That opening is right out of the original movie, and it's kind of a problem and a solution, I think. When I first watched the movie, I thought, oh, boy. This movie really takes a tonal
shift from straight-up teenage horror movie to kind of a more serious movie about a journalist. And the more I thought about it, the more I thought that's what's wonderful about the perspective in the original. It kind of sets up the promise and almost comments on the genre right off the bat, and it gets rid of all the exposition in that genre, and then we're able to move on. So I grew from being nervous about it to actually trying celebrating it and enjoy it.
What do you think it is about horror movies that makes them so popular with audiences?
Verbinski: I think that horror movies work best when they deal with some kind of contemporary issue. The thing I responded to with this movie was [the] actual moral ambiguity of the film, which is this kind of transferable nature of hatred. That you can hurt me and then I can find it justifiable to hurt somebody else, that I can transfer that. And that seems to be a very contemporary issue. And the idea that you can play a tape and die and be like, "I didn't do anything, why is it me?" And there's a kind of powerless nature to that that I think is contemporary terror. And I think that that is something that's universal.
Also in this issue:
James Patrick Kelly.
