For me, oddly, it's The Ring. The shitty american Ring that everyone agrees is really not very good and the ridiculous color filter slapped over the whole thing just makes it dreary and washed out and bad.
I know why this is, too. It's because I watched it in middle school before I had any experience with horror movies. The Ring was the first actual horror movie I ever watched and I didn't watch another until after college. As a result, I can't watch The Ring without being transported back to being a scared middle schooler. If I'd first watched it later, after I had a handle on the kinds of scares to expect from a horror movie, it wouldn't have affected me the same. Objectively, it's not that scary and is mostly just kind of bad, but fuck me if Samara climbing out of a TV isn't an image that scares me to this day, every time I think about it!
I hated the American remake of The Ring so goddamn much it made me learn how to pirate movies so I could get a subbed copy of Ringu, idk how you sat through that horsefucking nightmare of a remake lmfao
Honestly, I think The Ring (yes, the American remake) actually stands up pretty well and is a genuinely scary movie. It has plenty of cringe parts, the relationship drama was stupid and out of place, the whole overdone "spooky child" thing (with Aiden, not Samara, who really was terrifying) etc. It wasn't perfect. But the horror part really was good. It's one of those things that has been both copied and satirized so much that it seems like just a massive cliche. But it wasn't cliche at the time, at least not in American horror. The slow, determined and supernaturally inescapable girl in the TV emerging up out of the well and coming for you right through the medium that you thought would keep her separate, and the imagery and sound design they chose to frame it really was very good horror. I know people make fun of the video content of the deadly tape, but to me, it really is deeply unsettling imagery that gives me a certain feeling of the kind of tortured existence of Samara. It was decent story telling, and like I said, touched on some truly unsettling nerves.
For me, oddly, it's The Ring. The shitty american Ring that everyone agrees is really not very good and the ridiculous color filter slapped over the whole thing just makes it dreary and washed out and bad.
I know why this is, too. It's because I watched it in middle school before I had any experience with horror movies. The Ring was the first actual horror movie I ever watched and I didn't watch another until after college. As a result, I can't watch The Ring without being transported back to being a scared middle schooler. If I'd first watched it later, after I had a handle on the kinds of scares to expect from a horror movie, it wouldn't have affected me the same. Objectively, it's not that scary and is mostly just kind of bad, but fuck me if Samara climbing out of a TV isn't an image that scares me to this day, every time I think about it!
I hated the American remake of The Ring so goddamn much it made me learn how to pirate movies so I could get a subbed copy of Ringu, idk how you sat through that horsefucking nightmare of a remake lmfao
Well, I was in middle school and it was the first horror movie I ever watched.
Ringu is significantly better, I don't disagree
Honestly, I think The Ring (yes, the American remake) actually stands up pretty well and is a genuinely scary movie. It has plenty of cringe parts, the relationship drama was stupid and out of place, the whole overdone "spooky child" thing (with Aiden, not Samara, who really was terrifying) etc. It wasn't perfect. But the horror part really was good. It's one of those things that has been both copied and satirized so much that it seems like just a massive cliche. But it wasn't cliche at the time, at least not in American horror. The slow, determined and supernaturally inescapable girl in the TV emerging up out of the well and coming for you right through the medium that you thought would keep her separate, and the imagery and sound design they chose to frame it really was very good horror. I know people make fun of the video content of the deadly tape, but to me, it really is deeply unsettling imagery that gives me a certain feeling of the kind of tortured existence of Samara. It was decent story telling, and like I said, touched on some truly unsettling nerves.
Damn, Euclid couldn't handle this one!
/lh