Author Comment inteferon Sadako slave (11/2/02 5:03:45 am) Reply | Edit Several puzzlers re: American re-make I thought this was an excellent film and am not being critical in asking the following - I’m just curious what other viewers thought: 1. When Samara is being questioned by the shrink, what are the wires connected between her feet and the wall? 2. What's the meaning of all the EEG/ECG electrodes? I recall nowhere in the movie that any such monitoring was being done. 3. Why did Richard Morgan not want a child? After all, since there were several miscarriages, he must have been a willing participant in several impregnations. 4. Why is it that in the Japanese version the father kills the child and the opposite parent does so in the remake? Did this not upset the story line in a way that required other significant departures from the original? 5. The hermaphrodite references are omitted in the re-make. Would this have been considered too strong a subject for American audiences or altered the rating? 6. If Dreamworks secured the official re-make rights, why aren't the makers of that awful FearDotCom movie getting their butts sued off for such a thinly veiled rip-off? 7. Why did Richard Morgan have such a strong reaction on learning from Rachel of the existence of a tape with a message from Samara, and then display such a cooling in his interest when he learned there was also a copy? One would think that if he was interested in destroying all evidence or preventing future harm by taking any and all of Samara’s messages out of circulation, he might have tried to a) see what was on the tape that Rachel had, and b) cajole her into revealing where the copy was. 8. Was it just myself, or did anyone else have the sense that the Samara that crawled out of the TV set appeared fully grown in some of the shots? TIA for your insights. x5Will Sadako slave (11/2/02 6:23:46 am) Reply Feardotcom isn't that big of a rip off... If Feardotcom is a rip off because of the whole 'time limit to death after seeing something' then all the slasher films could sue other slasher films for stealing their idea. Lets look at some differences... The woman at the website was mulated by her killer and hidden in an abandoned factory. Sadako/Samara was killed by (her father/a professor/her mother) and dumped into a well. The women in the website wants her death avenged and will free anyone that helps. Sadako/Samara wants to destory mankind because she was (killed/raped and killed) and thrown in the well No explanation on the creation of the website or how exactly it kills. Sadako/Samara has psychic powers and kills by infecting with a virus and appearing to the people on the final day. The website gives 48 hours to live but hints at what they want. The videotape gives 7 days and in the novel, had instructions on how to survive but they were recorded over. The women from the website avenges her death, her body is found, and the main character survives because of it and the cursed website disappears. Sadako/Samara's body is found, and the main character survives but not because of finding the body,still wants mankind to feel her wrath. I like Feardotcom AND the Ring. hm2k further down the Spiral (11/2/02 6:29:07 am) Reply Re: puzzlers >>1. When Samara is being questioned by the shrink, what are the wires connected between her feet and the wall? 2. What's the meaning of all the EEG/ECG electrodes? I recall nowhere in the movie that any such monitoring was being done.<< -- Let me kill two birds with one stone: the wires that you saw went up Samara's legs and were connected to electrodes attached under her dress. We didn't see them, but they were there. -- hm2k SadakoIsEve everyone will suffer (11/2/02 8:28:48 am) Reply Re: Several puzzlers 3. Panic attack after so many miscarriages or he had given up hopeing and wanted to settle down into NOT haveing a child. Keep "trying" just to cement relationship and keep it healthy though 4. No big deal so don't worry. If indeed it matters then surely sequel will explain why killer was mom not dad. 5. Yep too strong an issue 7. He thought curse over. He doesn't want to be cursed. He'd rather end his life. 8. Many noticed that but I think it is same ol Samara just more serious and menaceing hm2k further down the Spiral (11/2/02 12:17:16 pm) Reply Re: Several puzzlers Actually, I think Richard knows nothing about the cursed tape. I think that he is confused as to what Rachael is referring to; he think's she means the tape from the mental hospital. He thinks she means to do a story on Samara and the history of her involvement with the string of events that happened so many years so. He has no knowledge of the Tape. -- hm2k HopkinsMedStudent shambler (11/2/02 12:23:13 pm) Reply the electrodes This is a movie blunder in my opinion. The cords were definitely EEG electrodes... but yet you dont see any of the electrodes attached to her scalp during the psychiatric interviews. The only possible explanation would be that they were actually ECG (cardiac) instead of EEG electrodes, but that doesnt make sense either. During a psychiatric session you arent interested generally in cardiac waveforms, you want the brain signals. inteferon Sadako slave (11/2/02 12:33:25 pm) Reply | Edit Too many similarities of major themes (Ring/Fear.com) Thanks for the responses. While I agree that the more typical slasher films borrow heavily from each other, the similarities between The Ring and FearDotCom are too striking to be a co-incidence and border on mean-spirited plagiarism (especially given the respective release dates): 1. In both instances a couple with a love interest are both infected by watching something forbidden (female first, then male) and must race against time to solve the mystery. 2. In both case an abused female entity’s corpse lies hidden under water and the thrust of the plot is for the heroine to find the corpse. She may receive help from the male partner to find the general location of the body, but must then interact with the corpse alone. Avenging female corpses are common themes (I Spit On Your Grave, etc.), but the water theme and the methodology of corpse discovery are too similar. 3. The similarities in the surreal, grainy solarized imagery of the web/tape content were a dead giveaway. Furthermore, the strong (phallic?) theme of the lighthouse and the chimneystack as the primary location indicators was no co-incidence. 4. Spontaneous nosebleeds in horror films are rare. While I an not easily disturbed, I found the graphic misogynistic violence of FearDotCom to be totally excessive, pointless (beyond cheap shock value) and beyond pornographic. Yech! InfluxDatum further down the Spiral (11/2/02 1:04:05 pm) Reply Feardotcom.com is just so bad and so annyoing that... Mr. Jackass Ebert had better reviews going for it than for the ring.