Recently I was able to view the movie the RING with a few people.. one of those in the viewing party was someone born slightly before the original movie came out.. She had no idea what was scary about a VHS cassette tape. Probably didn’t even understand what a VHS tape even was. And even with the creepy nature of the movie the RING, and then visually appealing horror symbolism and dark colors presented in the film, the movie ended up not being very scary for her.
I realized then.. 13 years has really moved out society along quickly.
The things that were scary in the 90s were lampooned in the early 2000s by SCARY MOVIE.. the creepy gore films of the mid 2000s are old news. The new horror is visceral. It’s real. Gone are the campy films of teenage sex but here are the new modern days of birth defects, mental illness, war, and poverty. They are the themes of horror – the scary movies are just elements of the real fear of society.
I say all of this because there is a new movie coming out this year called RINGS. You can view it here:
You are looking at that right. It’s a sequel. Sequel-ish..
The description:
A new chapter in the beloved RING horror franchise. A young woman becomes worried about her boyfriend when he explores a dark subculture surrounding a mysterious videotape said to kill the watcher seven days after he has viewed it. She sacrifices herself to save her boyfriend and in doing so makes a horrifying discovery: there is a “movie within the movie” that no one has ever seen before
I am going to give this a chance.. It will be interesting to see how a video tape themed horror film will be changed and made modern for the new century.. A part of me actually thinks the original movie presents a problem for getting an audience in the new age. Kids of today, seriously, just don’t like the original RING. And that dislike and scorn because of the late 20th century technology in the RING could cause people to turn away from this movie just as easily.
Or .. they can pander to the modern age and made things really, really tech-centric. And then.. insult the 30 somethings like me who loved the RING when it originally came out.
