UNQUIET GRAVES: Horror movie reviews. Or, really, snacks. In the order in which I saw them:

Audition: Japanese horror; incredibly scary and suspenseful until the climax begins, about 20-30 minutes from the end. After that it devolved, from my perspective, into standard-issue icky-creepy-ouch. I loved the setup (widower auditions women for role of next wife, but becomes enthralled by intensely frightening beautiful lady with a secret) but the climax felt way too horror-movie, rather than actually horrifying. Still: scariest gray bag in movie history, you ask me.

May: I feel like I must have been missing something. It struck me as utterly predictable indie-Psycho. I’m pretty sure that people liked this movie for a reason, so if you did, please don’t think I’m saying you’re wrong: I’m saying I don’t get it, and I’d be interested to hear what you think I didn’t grasp here.

…I also saw Session 9 around the same time I saw these two movies, and between the three of them, I got thoroughly sick of “being hurt by others makes you a bad person” storylines. “I live in the weak and the wounded”–an idea that’s more cruel than it is true; anti-Christian; and, three movies in a row, just wearying.

I actually got a lot out of Session 9, and I’ll say the following four things with certainty: It looks absolutely amazing (it was filmed in a real, abandoned mental hospital, an enormous complex of sorrow–this setting is the reason to see the movie), it has a terrific blue-collar setup, the actors are great, and there are too many red herrings. It’s a memorable and beautifully-shot movie. I’m not sure what, if anything, I have to say about mental illness in horror; Session 9 equivocates between being a movie about past suffering and being a movie about creepy people. I didn’t like the fact that the movie didn’t even seem to realize that it was exploitive.

It’s a powerful B-movie, basically. I love B-movies, but a lot of them… not so much with the thinking.

Ringu and then The Ring: It’s probably easier to talk about these two together, even though it might well be true that people generally prefer whichever one they saw first. I strongly preferred Ringu.

Some of that was because, compared to the American remake, it maximized horror elements that always work for me (shots of the black and churning ocean) and minimized horror elements that never do (lugubrious children). I will say for certain that the soundtrack of Ringu is just miles beyond the predictable soundtrack of The Ring—Ringu‘s inhuman noises genuinely kept me up at night afterward, jolting awake at every little rumble or squeak. I’m pretty sure the acting is better, more physical and horrifying. Ringu is a scary, scary movie, with an awesomely uncompromising ending. (And yes, I realize there’s one way in which the American ending is actually more merciless. I’m not sure why I still preferred the Japanese one–possibly just because the ending is deeply character-centered, and I cared about the Japanese characters more, see below.)

Sean Collins writes about the way in which the American version has certain culture-war/cautionary-tale elements. And I mean, yes, your parent is not your pal; but the addition of this cautionary element is the main reason I disliked the American version from the start, and only slowly got over myself and started noticing ways in which it was also good, and even the occasional improvement over the Japanese version. (You should see both, btw, although I agree with the friend who strongly urged me to see Ringu first.)

Anyway, the American characters are just so incredibly unpleasant! They’re rude and annoying (yes, the kid too, very much so), and I didn’t want to be around them. The Japanese characters are kind of generic, but generically likable. The lady even remembers to take off her shoes when she enters a creepy scary cabin she’s casing! I think that makes the indictment of the story’s ending more universal in the Japanese version: Cautionary tales are inherently less scary if you don’t do the bad behavior in question, and I, you know, don’t cuss in front of children, and I try not to do that obnoxious American “*sigh* I’m sorry, but not really” vocal inflection. Or maybe I can phrase it as: “Be as bad as you want, it doesn’t matter” is less scary to me than, “Be as good as you can, it won’t matter”….

ps: Possibly wrong, or banal, oversimplifying thought: Could it be said that The Ring turns its merciless storyline toward the horror of children as moral equals, and Ringu drives the same story toward the horror of family as hierarchy?