Skip to main content

31 Days of Horror Movies - Day 9

 

We are nearly halfway through the month and there's still plenty of fantastic horror picks we have yet to choose for you, but today is a classic! Let's just say it right out of the gate, this is easily one of the best remakes of all time and one of the scariest PG-13 movies ever. 

Day 9 - The Ring

Hideo Nakata's Ringu is one of the great Japanese horror films of the late '90s. What Gore Verbinski does with his American remake is keep the same eerie and disturbing atmosphere of the original and successfully Americanize it for a completely different audience. The story of a Seattle reporter, played brilliantly by Naomi Watts, that investigates a mysterious videotape linked with several deaths contains some of the most disturbing visuals for a PG-13 film ever. The footage of the actual videotape, shot in black and white and resembling a surreal nightmare complete with bizarre footage of a ladder falling or a woman in a mirror, still terrifies with its simple and haunting nature. The Ring doesn't even have a lot of blood or gore but what makes it terrifying is the incredibly unnerving sense of dread that the film carries throughout its running time. Verbinski knows that the best way to frighten people, if you do not have an R rating, is to rely on atmosphere and effective images that will linger on the audience's imagination long after the credits roll. Verbinski still explores plenty of fascinating ideas with The Ring, like the impact of home video, isolation, family trauma, early 2000s paranoia, and a recontextualization of the urban legend myth in a way that honors Nakata's original vision by retaining the main visual language in a completely different setting. It also doesn't hurt that the image of Samara coming out of the TV is one of the most nerve-shattering and transgressive visuals of the 2000s. We didn't even talk about the fact that Brian Cox delivers an emotionally devastating supporting performance or that Hans Zimmer's score is haunting, lyrical, and absolutely terrifying.


*All of the recommendations that we make can be found at the El Paso Public Library Catalog! 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

31 Days of Horror Movies - Day 16

  We are officially less than halfway through with our list! Yay! As you all have probably noticed we are fully in R rated territory and today's pick is a genuine slasher classic, not to mention a phenomenon that is still going strong 27 years later!  Day 16 - Scream (1996) The late, great Wes Craven was one of the masters of horror and Scream (1996) remains one of his crowning achievements. Following the Jason Lives model, screenwriter Kevin Williamson and Craven team up to deliver a film that practically revolutionized horror in the process. Having changed the face of horror in the previous two decades ( The Hills Have Eyes , and A Nightmare on Elm Street ) Craven does it again with Scream by crafting a movie that both references and adores horror but isn't afraid to criticize it. The story of Sidney Prescott and her fight for survival against the deadly Ghostface killer has all the trademarks of a fantastic Craven film, including incredibly suspenseful sequences, a terrify...
Post a Comment
Read more

31 Days of Horror Movies - Day 31

  HAPPY HALLOWEEN!  We have officially made it! If you've been watching along with us and choosing all our recommendations, then thank you! There's nothing else to say, other than without any further ado... here is our final pick! ( Cue the JC score ) Day 31 - John Carpenter's Halloween "The Night HE Came Home!" Of course it was going to be John Carpenter's classic! The alpha and omega of slasher films is the quintessential Halloween watch. The story of Michael Myers, or as he is better known in the film as The Shape, stalking a babysitter has basically become classic. A true watershed film and a benchmark for the genre, Halloween not only changed the game but it spawned countless of imitators leading to the entire slasher subgenre boom in the 1980s. This is another one of those films where direction is everything - Carpenter takes a page from Hitchcock's textbook and allows suspense to become the key ingredient of the film. Originally titled "The Ba...
Post a Comment
Read more

31 Days of Horror Movies - Day 23

  Do not be surprised if a lot of these next titles are consistent classics, because what else are we going to do as we get closer to Halloween! For today's recommendation, it only seems fitting that we start the week with a pick that was based on a novel from the King of Horror... Stephen King, that is. Day 23 - Carrie (1976) Of course we're going with the original 1970s Carrie , directed as a stylish symphony of horror by Brian De Palma, and starring Sissy Spacek and the late, great Piper Laurie. Carrie , based on King's first novel of the same name, tells the story of a young girl who attempts to navigate high school life as she starts to develop psychic powers. Everything from the unflinching view of high school life, the film starts with an incredible opening credits sequence that informs the viewer exactly what the tone of the film is going to be, to the Academy Award nominated performances to even the last act of the film scream "classic". By telling the s...
Post a Comment
Read more