Scenes We Hate: The Ring
Filed under: Trailers and Clips
I've mentioned this before: I'm not a big fan of animal death in film. That being said, I'm fine with it when it's necessary (and not a 20-tissue family film). I love pit bulls, but the bodies in No Country for Old Men made chilling sense. As did the dog death in Watchmen, or rat devastation in Willard or Wanted, or the strange, horse-head humor of My Winnipeg. If I can give the death a point, it's a-ok.
But then there's The Ring -- a film that creeped the crap out of me in the best way, but became quickly tainted when the horse went nuts. I get the fact that Naomi Watts scared the horse into insanity. I even get it jumping overboard. But instead of being a chilling moment, it was made into a grotesque show -- the sound of the horse's legs cracking on the railing, the shots of it flailing in the water.
It's quite unfortunate, but it made me close the book on The Ring, rather than keeping it in my arsenal for random nights when a scare or two is needed. If it was at the beginning or end, I'd edit it out and keep my own movie (like how I almost never watch the ending of Doom Generation to avoid the switch from dark comedy to sadistic thriller). But as it stands, it's just a terrible spot in the middle that taints the whole finished product.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
3-10-2009 @ 8:20PM
YouFaceTheTick said...
The ring is scary? Okey dokey... scary bad writing maybe.
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3-13-2009 @ 3:06AM
e3m88 said...
lol
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3-11-2009 @ 8:05AM
Dan said...
I hate to see dogs dying in films particularly, and usually most animals, but (and forgive me for saying so) I thought this scene was actually pretty hilarious. I saw this movie when I was younger and part of it stemmed from the fact that it was so silly in an otherwise eerie movie.
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3-11-2009 @ 1:06AM
Mr. R said...
I think the horse simply realized he was on a scary movie starring Naomi Watts. I would do the same.
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3-11-2009 @ 6:23AM
red_herring said...
I dunno, my perception of the movie wasn't really altered by this scene. It's gross, but not SO gross that it really stuck in my memory, if you know what I mean.
Personally, The Ring scared the living crap out of me, and continues to do so to this day, much more than the boring, lackluster Japanese version that everyone seems so enamored with.
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3-11-2009 @ 9:17AM
Kevin said...
Agreed. I totally forgot about this scene, so I guess I'd put it in my "Scenes that were useless" list instead of "scenes we hate". The scene that stuck with me was the ending where they show the faces of the dead people. That was my lightning bolt memory, and apparently entirely erased the horse scene from my memory.
3-11-2009 @ 8:46AM
techstar25 said...
It's a completely pointless scene that does nothing to advance the plot whatsoever. It's the kind of scene that might get deleted, or might show up in the original screenplay, but then get scrapped.
I saw the Asian original and the horse scene was not part of it. Many critics used that scene as an example of how the remake was full of cheap scares that deviated from the spirit of the original (as is the case with all the recent remakes).
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3-11-2009 @ 12:51PM
juwan808@hotmail.com said...
Animal deaths in films don't bother me because they're not real. But you take the old westerns, they used to really hurt those animals, putting up wires to trip them up when they were running so they'd look like they got shot. That was brutal.
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