First let's get the good out of the way. Yes, it looks great. When you have a budget that is fifty times bigger than the original, it better look sharper than the original or you really have to cut back on the doughnut budget.

This movie started the long and shameful line of Americanized remakes of Japanese horror movies that continue to this day. The biggest sin these movies commit is they take all the subtlety out of the movie and hand feed you each and every plot point with a spoon with big flashy step pieces that fall into place with audible thumps like Tetris blocks. What made the original "Ringu" so enjoyable was the subtlety that pervaded the entire movie. In this version the tense, gloomy, claustrophobic enivorment has been replaced with a camera filter making everything blue grey, because we have to visibly show the audience that things are gloomy. We're not going to chance them not picking up on it.

The plot is carved down to a nice bite sized mass market chunk that, while making everything clearer, also takes away a lot of the mystery that made the first "Ringu" so fun. The original didn't answer every possible question and left it up to you to decide. The ending is pure Disneyfied, but I doubt the original ending would fly well with US audiences.

But what really drove me nuts throughout the entire movie was the kid. I hated him from the very first wide-eyed "Village of the Damned" meets "Sixth Sense" scene. Kids in American horror movies are like a three legged mule on a treadmill: while the intention is well meant, it completely ruins the movie, as well as the treadmill. In the original movie, the kid was seen as independent, while in this movie the kid is seen as a world-weary know it all, and it drives me mad when movies have a kid acting like he is 45. In the original movie they got rid of the kid fairly early on and stuck with the two main characters, while this movie insists on dragging him along so he can annoy me for incredibly long stretches of the film.

While this movie certainly does work a lot better than 99% of later remakes--the remake of "Pulse" comes to mind--it still isn't nearly as good as the original because they took away all the subtle bits and added loud noise set piece horror sequences like the horse on the ferry boat and the hair in the mouth bit.