God damn that movie scared the crap out of me and I didn't even see half of it because I was staring through my fingers at the floor and asking Kickarse when the happy ending was coming (She told me all the horses came back to life and there was singing and dancing, damn her deceitful ways!). I actually wanted to mention the most horrifying instance of a child in an inapproriate movie ever seen by your's truley. I was at that movie Donnie Brasco (?) with Johnny Depp and during the scene where they kicked the snot out of that asian dude, this six year old kid started screaming and his presumed father actually turned to him and yelled "Shut up! You're ruining the movie! Go sit by the car if you can't shut up"

Haven't seen it yet, But I just saw "Dark Waters" which is by the director of the original Japanese "Ring" movie. It was sooooo good and spooky. My friend did wardrobe for the new hollywood Ring film - she said it kinda blew as a movie, but I'll go see it anyway because I'm a sucker for scares (which it apparently has).

p-girl: It is an American remake of Hideo Nakata's "Ring" (part 1).

Yipes Stripes!
I saw it last night and I couldn't sleep
I actually 'slept' with the light on, and one eye open. I sort of tried to close my eyes around 1:50 and tried to sleep but got up at 5:45 and was UP. I had to tell my parents I woke up b/c I had to pee and saw no reason to go back to bed for 10 min. I was scared! Half of my being scared was because my friend had already seen it and left me this "I'm so scared" voice mail, then when I was watching it, I kept looking at him to see if it would be scary. Aaaaah! I thought this was scarier than Session 9, or at least equivalent, at least with that I drove home alone in the dark, on the same windy road as usual, this time I drove straight through the city...heheheh
I'm such a wimp.
DO NOT SEE THIS IF YOU SCARE EASILY.
My eyes hurt b/c I haven't really closed them all night. Ack! :)
That being said,
Do see it if you like the crap scared out of you and you don't mind a very very thin, poorly justified plot.
Warning spoiler:
Ok so why would she go pet the horse if she KNEW it was in the tape and she was going to creepy horse island? So stupid and gratuitous.

Also was anyone bugged by the fact that the two schoolgirls in the beginning of the movie are wearing their outfits, but their shirts are only buttoned with two buttons? It seemed gratuitous...
jt

jtsang, did you also notice how short their skirts were? i saw it last night, and while it was definitly super scary, the plot kind of annoyed me. i want to see the japanese version.

I DID notice their short skirts, and it annoyed me. Essentially the plot was irritating, but the concept and that video scared the heck out of me. Scarey violins and large startling noises get me every time...
it didn't help that I tried to 'erase' it from my mind by watching the simpsons and that episode ends with the tv blitzing out.
jt

Since there are other spoilers I am going to go ahead and ask a few questions - SO IF YOU DON'T WANNA KNOW, DON'T READ:

1) How did those 2 teens die in the beginning that were in the car? There was no TV for that girl to crawl out of - does she crawl out of radios too?

2) How did that tape come to be? Did those 4 teenagers accidentally create it at that cabin trying to tape something else or did it exist before then? If those four teens did create it, how did the gossip going around know that in seven days you die? All the girl would say on the phone is "Seven Days". I would wonder - seven days til what? I guess since it was a creepy video it was a good guess.

3) If all the main character had to do was make a copy of the tape to not die, why did she go through all that scary crap (bloody nose, icky string, the hand print on the arm, etc) and ALMOST die? All her kid had to do was make the copy. Was it because they both "heard" her? Didn't the deadbeat dad make copies of it too while investigating the film quality?

4) With the corpses - were they literally scared to death? Or were they supposed to look like they died in a well? The corpses were so scary. I guess it was not seeing the transformation that made it that much scarier.

5) Also, when they show the scene where the first corpse is found - was she sitting in a closet and did her corpse fall in a way where she looked up at the person who found her? Was it her mom that found her? (I had my hands over my face at that moment)

6) Where did the teenage friend disappear to in the beginning (the one that went crazy)?

The plot holes were distracting, but at the same time I think it made it more terrifying because it left it up to the viewer to fill in the blank and that really gets me in trouble.

Hester,
SPOILERS
Great questions, and I don't really know. I thought the mom found the girl in the hallway, but it looked like a closet. I'd have to watch again to be sure, but I don't think I will be. It also bugged me about the whole thing with the kids in the car dying. My friend was saying that maybe when your 7 days are up, you die at that instant you watched it, tv or no tv. And I'm not sure if dead beat dad made a tape, but that's a good catch! Oh and I was assuming that the tape was what the dead beat dad was gonna find in the archives, it was weird how it wasn't that at all, so I was going off that it was created by the dead girl, b/c there was no camera filming the tape i.e. it was memories or something like that. No idea really, alot of the vagueness scared me, but nothing so much as girl crawling out of TV.
jt

Eyh.
In the Japanese there is no horses, and they only know about well-girl by working things out and talking to some guy. This is weird and frustrating me! I have to see American one so I can understand. When does it come out here! :-(

spoiler on where the tape came from..


I think the little girl made it.. Remember the part where she's videotaped talking to the psychologist or whoever? They hold up those pictures that look like they were made on x-ray film, and she said that she made them, but she didn't know how, or where they came from other than her head.. I think it was probably something like that, where her thoughts or visions or something print themselves on film.

I'm going to see it again tonight. (friend's birthday, going with people who haven't seen it yet, and i get to watch them flip out, hehe.) I'll see if I can catch more answers.

***SPOILERS RESPONDING TO HESTER!!!***

1- I don't get this part either.

2- Like the girl says, she just "sees the pictures and then they just are." I think because the tape was made in the room right above where she was buried (remember, they were taping the football in the cabin?) that her memories get burned onto the tape. They may have created that tape, but there have probably been tapes made before at "Shelter Mountain" that have created an urban legend.

3-The kid was still going through the weird crap, you don't know that it stopped right away after he made the tape. I think anyway. D.D. (Noah) didn't make a copy, though he wanted to.

4-Bryan thinks they were supposed to be burned by her creepy burning touch. I think part of it was the "scared to death" part.

5-Yep. I think maybe the teenage girl saw her first, but the mom saw her too. (She probably ran to the closet to get away from Samara??)

6-??? I imagine she was just upstairs somewhere, maybe washing her face, brushing her teeth before bed?

I'm totally with you, Hester, I kind of like vague plot holes in horror movies. It's what makes it scary to me because my imagination runs wild thinking about it, and it's fun/scary to theorize and get scared all over again! I also like the vague creepy images, once again letting your imagination take over and creep you out. It helps that it took place here, too... And get this for scary: next weekend, my husband and I are going to go stay in an isolated cottage renovated from a BARN in the town where they filmed all this scary shit! AAARGH! And there's a big TV and VCR right across from the bed. AIEEE!



(And yeah on the short skirts. The first thing my husband and I both noticed is that ALL the women were like 8 feet tall, 99 lbs. Boo.)

***SPOILERS...AGAIN*****

Thanks for the responses.

In response to the responses:
1) Hmmm...oh well
2) I remember the taping part (the teens trying to tape a game), but I guess I was hung up thinking that that particular tape those teens had was the first one - when there may have been other people who have tried to record or something in that very same cabin and to their misfortune had made previous copies. So Karen, that's a great explanation!
3) The mom was still was having problems even though she made the copy right off the bat - so I guess you get the symptoms without the death part or something? It stops after 7 days?
4) Hadn't thought about the torch. EWWWWW
5) If that other girl was in the bathroom, how come there was water seeping out and stuff or why didn't you hear her in another room? I know there's no real answer for this. It just seemed weird that all of the sudden she disappeared (a technique often used in scary movies to freak the audience out).

It drives me nuts in scary movies when the character makes that transformation from being stalked and running scared to being strangely hypnotized to walk towards the scary sound/the dark/whatever.

One of my friends saw The Others said she didn't find it scary at all because this girl who sat behind her in the theater kept talking to the screen, "Oh no you don't, girlfriend. Don't you answer that door! Girlfriend!!!! What the hell are ya doin?".

hey karen, where are you staying? some of the movie was filmed in my hometown (stanwood, go spartans) but i couldn't really figure out which parts, as everything that took place outside the city just looked sort of vaugely northwest.

ps those were good explanations, karen!

go spartans!

We're going to Port Townsend/Fort Worden, which is where all the "Shelter Mountain" stuff was filmed. Maybe "Moesko Island" was Stanwood?

oh and the water was seeping out because that happened every time the girl shows up.

And I have a distinct advantage, 'cause I've already seen it twice. ;)

the house on moesko island def. looked like stanwood, but there are so many houses/areas like that up there it is hard to say. scary...look out for any freaky little girls!

oh, here's something else that was weird. SPOILER ALERT.

why was the mom (arg, i can't remember her name, the mom that killed samara) dressed in victorian looking clothes when she pushed her daughter in the well? because the dad was still alive and i remember the year "1978" being thrown out there somewhere. was that just a plot hole, or did i miss something?

It's because Victorian clothes are CREEPY!

That gothic-looking shit is in every scary movie.

ha ha JK

I don't know, but that's a good question.

Isn't that how all horsey people dress? All the horse riding chicks I've ever known seem to have been heavily into the victorian riding gear. The dead beat dad (DBD) couldn't make a copy because he never really had the video to himself. remember, she took it with her afer his "assistant" came back and pretty much had it with her the entire time. I liked the cheesy stabs at horror platitudes, To me, this movie was everything Scream wanted to be and wasn't, a fun send up of horror movie tropes (Sexy teen girls who hide in closets? Ha ha!) with a genuinely spooky core. I just loved the fake ending topped off with "You helped her? You weren't SUPPOSED to help her!"

hester, you crack me up!
I thought she looked really out of place in the lighthouse photo, also I thought it was really old b/c of the victorian clothes. which are creepy! But maybe it was their attempt at making it seem 'timeless' kind of like how richie in the royal tennenbaums seems to dress like he's a kid in the 70s when it's present day. I don't know, it was just damn scary!
jt

hey now, i was horsey and i dressed like a cowgirl, dammit. :)

I was a cowgirl horsey girl too!

How scary won´t it be the day when this movie is released on video and you can actually rent it in a videostore, like in the movie? I think VERY SCARY (though I haven´t seen the film, I dont dare to).