Perhaps you saw The Ring in a theater on October 18, 2002, and shared the sheer terror and delight of a packed auditorium responding to an incredibly startling moment on the big screen. We've rarely seen so much genuine excitement in a movie theater.
The box office success of The Ring, based on a Japanese movie, led to a boom in remakes of Asian horror-thrillers that lasted for years. As might be expected, the quality level varied, but if you're interested in checking out the best and avoiding the worst of these remakes, we've compiled the following countdown complete with trailers to give you a taste.
Top 3
The Ring (2002)
Hideo Nakata's 1998 original was a stone-cold chiller, and Gore Verbinski's remake stuck closely to its source material. Despite some unnecessary embellishments, evidently intended to clarify and explain the ghostly proceedings, the carefully cultivated atmosphere of dread and a couple of shocking images held sway and scared audiences out of their seats.
Dark Water (2005)
Another Japanese-language film by Hideo Nakata, this time helmed by Brazilian director Walter Salles who surrounded Jennifer Connelly with a top-flight cast including John C. Reilly, Tim Roth, Dougray Scott and Pete Postlethwaite. The story of a mother and her daughter, haunted by their own troubled past and the ghostly presence of former residents of a broken-down apartment building, proved to be more powerful than expected.
The Grudge (2004)
Director Takashi Shimizu remade his own 2002 original, transferring the anxious atmosphere and surly ghosts into a slightly rejiggered setting. Sarah Michelle Gellar acquitted herself admirably, which bolstered the film at the U.S. box office and ensured more sequels to come.
Bottom 3
One Missed Call (2008)
To be fair, the Japanese-language original was not much more than a conventional suspense piece from the oft-subversive filmmaker Takashi Miike. The remake, however, plunged deeply into the abyss, removing decent material with substandard stereotypical sequences, and the cast flailed, resulting in a film completely lacking in suspense, tension and thrills.
The Uninvited (2009)
A strong cast, including Arielle Kebbel, Emily Browning, Elizabeth Banks and David Straithairn, could not save this misbegotten remake of the Korean thriller A Tale of Two Sisters. The original fully developed its adult themes and made effective use of explicit violence. The remake dulled the edges in order to secure a PG-13 rating and failed to find any equivalent thrills in its replacement material.
Pulse (2006)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa adapted his own novel for a 2001 film and created a stomach-churning atmosphere of dread as ghostly spirits began to invade the earthly realm. A piercing sense of alienation, isolation and loneliness made it a completely unnerving film to experience. The remake cherry-picked the more sensational imagery and made hash of the deep emotional heft of the original, reducing it to a shallow series of "gotcha" moments despite a game performance by Kristen Bell.
