31 Days of Asian Horror: Pulse (2001) vs Pulse (2006)

It’s the last paring of the month, and today we are focusing on the 2001 Japanese techno-horror and its 2006 US remake of the same name. The original is directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, a well-known director in the genre and known for a slew of horror films such as Cure (1997) and Creepy (2016). The remake was scripted by Wes Craven and directed by Jim Sonzero. The two movies sort of stay in the same storyline, but a bit of is changed, the major difference is that the original movie follows two storylines that eventually merge together. The original follows Michi (Kumiko Aso), a florist who finds her coworker dead, and Ryosuke (Haruhiko Kato), a student who finds his computer showing weird images and the two eventually unveil a slew of suicides that result from a ghost taking over the internet. The remake focuses mostly on Mattie (Kristen Bell) who finds her boyfriend dead and starts to investigate what happened.

Pulse has a relatively weird plot and premise, and it’ll inherently be a hard sell to translate to Western audiences, especially when you tie in the advancement of technology in Japan compared to the US at the time of both movies, but the remake does an okay job at recreating the atmosphere of the original all things considered and does try to lean into the techno-horror, whether they accomplish it or not. The original is a slow-burn mystery, heavy on the investigation, but has some creepy elements that help aid the mystery, more poetic and gothic than outright creepiness. The remake tries to focus more on concrete things, such as a more definitive definition of the ghosts and heightened thrills. A lot of the movie heavily plays into the use of internet technology specifically in the early 2000’s. Using suicide as the form of death isn’t just because it’s needed, it ties into what the internet was mostly used for when it first came out. There’s an overall feeling of “joining in the loneliness” which was present at that time in message boards and chatrooms. A lot of people were using the internet to connect with other people because they were feeling lonely in their daily lives and trying to create some sort of community with the people they were talking to online because they weren’t feeling that connection in real life. The original movie conveys this sentiment much more and focuses the plot to be driven by loneliness and the desperate need for some sort of community. Even the videos of those who passed convey that loneliness, the ghosts were alone in life and trying not to be alone in death as well by taking everyone with them.

I do think that the remake falls flat for most of the movie, however. Mostly because the slow build does not translate to what the remake is trying to do. It falls into the trap of trying to heighten and over exaggerate things more, focusing more on the horror that is presented, and not allowing the horror to be created from the tension and atmosphere. While the original focuses more on the mystique of what the ghost is, the US remake defines it a bit more and just loses the creativity of the original. I think a lot of that downfall is because the target audience was a lot younger, trying to pull in the audience from the teen horror craze, and ultimately dumbs down a lot of the story because of it, leaving behind a lot of the plot that is driven by loneliness which I found was the most unique and interesting part of the story and made the general plot make so much more sene. If you are trying to decide between the two, the original is worth finding and presents an overall creepier story that has great builds and a deeper storyline.

Pulse is currently available for rental on most services and on DVD, with the original available on Tubi.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: Ju-on: The Grudge (2002) vs The Grudge (2004)

It’s a Grudge kind of week, and after talking about the Netflix series back on Monday, it seemed only fitting to talk about the movie and its US remake for today’s pairing. It’s also the 19th birthday of Ju-On: The Grudge, as it premiered on October 18th at the Screamfest Film Festival, and the US remake’s 17th birthday is on the 22nd making it even more fitting that I celebrate with two posts about the franchise this week. It’s almost like a pre-planned this or something :)

Though the movies share some similarities, there were some differences and found that for some of the things I liked, the other movie didn’t quite live up to and vice versa. Since the series is fairly well known I figured for this review I would break it up into sections and comment on those specific points more than just an overall review. Note, there is a 2020 remake of the movie, but I haven’t watched it nor am I going to tie it or any of the other sequels and remakes into this post. The Grudge series is pretty extensive (it doesn’t even start with Ju-On: The Grudge), but I am only focusing on Ju-On: The Grudge vs the first US remake, The Grudge.

The two movies do share quite a bit in characteristics, but I do find that there are some noticeable differences in the two that really effected my general enjoyment. One being the setup of the curse. The US remake made the decision to set the film in Japan, but the curse happens almost exclusively on English-speakers which inherently forces the plot to not be able to take the turns that the original did. With the original we got to see the grudge as essentially the main character of the movie. It was what tied the stories and characters together. While the US remake sort of does this, it falls flat in the expansiveness of the curse. Because it’s limited to just picking English speakers, or that we’re really only hearing from them, the curse seems like it hasn’t been around for as long as it has and the permeation of the curse isn’t as effective. We also miss out on a lot of the way the original ties in the characters, purely on the fact that if you see a white person, you know it’s part of it and reveals end up falling flat.

The original is set up almost like anthology of sorts, and spans a bit more time. While I don’t think it does the best job working them in as cohesively as they should, it does have a better grasp at connecting people and showing what the curse is and how it operates. One of the main storylines that is cut out of the US remake that I really enjoy is the daughter of the detective, Izumi (Misa Uehara), who was the only one left alive after her father tried to set fire to the house while she and her friends were there. Her friends and her father died, leaving her to grieve and feel remorseful as the only living person, and the scenes we see of her add a new level to the curse that we don’t really get to see as well from the remake. There’s also a bit more emphasis on how it effects the survivors and how when the entity isn’t directly killing, it’s still doing harm. Taking this plot out of the movie effectively made Karen (Sarah Michelle Gellar) the main character of the movies when in the original Rika (Megumi Okina) is almost there for the purpose to bookend the movie and be the character that ties it all together, allowing the other characters a bit more emphasis and solidifying the grudge and house being the true main characters.

I do find that besides the breakdown of Izumi, most of the original isn’t quite as scary. The US remake works in the entity a bit more creepier, and the effects of the black blob work better as well as making some of the scares a little more quieter and mysterious. As I stated above, I had some issues with the cohesion of the acts in the original, and felt that the remake worked some of them in a bit better, establishing what was in the past more definitively than the original. I also felt the opening scene in the remake set the tone for the movie a bit more and generally liked how it worked into the story, as well as Gellar’s acting being a lot more convincing than Okinas. Whether it was a problem with sound effects being added in post production so she couldn’t sync up or her skill, a lot of the first time you see her on screen she never convinces you that things are scary. She doesn’t react to some noises and does others, and it took a bit more time for the tone of the movie to really settle in.

I feel like if you’ve been with me on this daily journey, you’ll already know what I’m going to comment on next, as I’ve said it in the prior two pairings I’ve done - the insistence of there being a happy ending plagues this one just like all the other remakes. I get it, it’s open purposefully to hopefully get more money with sequels but it’s exhausting and tiring. We’ve already seen multiple people die, I don’t expect this to end happily. And it shouldn’t. It’s a cop out that in turn sabotages all that you’ve set up with the grudge. The ending of the original just makes more sense, and I liked the way they accomplished it through a time jump where the character was caught off guard and had been removed from the events for a while was much more effective solidifying the permeation of the grudge and that you are never truly out of its grasp.

Ju-On: The Grudge can be found on a number of places to rent and streaming on Amazon Prime, and The Grudge is currently streaming on Pluto TV (it just was taken off of Prime last month).

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31 Days of Asian Horror: 13 Game of Death (2006) vs 13 Sins (2014)

Today’s pairing is of the 2006 Thai horror-comedy, 13: Game of Death, and the 2014 US remake, 13 Sins. While I feel that both of the movies have enough to make them two different watches, the rough backstory is the same. A man who is down on his luck receives a mysterious call who promises money if he goes through different stunts, each progressively harder and more degrading as the monetary value rises.

As I said, both films have the same general premise but stray a bit in their execution. While the Thai version is labeled as a comedy, it is noticeably different in tone than the US remake. The US one tends to go a bit darker, ramping up the thriller aspect and making some of the games more gruesome. This difference leads to a very different mindset when going into the movies. In 13: Game of Death, you spend most of the time trying to understand what is happening and what the next thing is going to be. It’s more erratic in its degrees and a lot of the time the games focus on actions that don’t hold a lot more consequence than embarrassment or degrading to him solely, which is much more impactful when the character has already been beaten down by life.

The other major difference between the two is the way that our protagonist is represented. In 13: Game of Death he’s a loner, constantly giving money to his mother, and not a high seller in his company. He’s overshadowed by his coworkers and genuinely down on his luck, lost, and alone. In the remake, he’s a bit more well-off. He has a few bad things that happen in the very beginning that set off everything, but comparatively, he has a much better life. He is in a seemingly great relationship, has a fairly good relationship with his brother. While he does lose his job he talks about how he was a high earner. Most of his debt is that he has other people depending upon him, but they are people active and loving in his life. He’s just not at the level the original main character is. You can kind of see this in the way the scene with the fly varies between the two movies. Phuchit is a fly at the beginning, or at least he perceives himself to be. He’s being constantly swatted down and when he hits the fly with the newspaper, it’s finally him changing and taking charge. Elliot does it because it’s a fun game that can fix his (new) problems easily.

I think it’s one of the major missteps that the remake took in my personal enjoyment of the film. The actions that unfolded felt much more real and understandable coming from the original, and the actions from the remake seemed like something he would already do. This wasn’t someone desperately down on his luck and at his absolute lowest, this was someone who had some bad things happen recently, and got lucky that the game fell into his lap magically. When all of the action comes to a head at the end of the movie, both versions portray the character as remorseful and sorrowful, but it didn’t feel that the remake made me truly feel that he was. He was just more exhausted or he just realized that he took on something much bigger than he expected. It felt like in the original I was rooting for the underdog, and in the remake I was rooting for the annoying character.

-Slight Spoilers-

The ending of the remake is what really sunk the entire thing for me. While I enjoyed the setup of the character in the original more, I was enjoying how different this version was and so it didn’t bother me as much, and was enjoying the film for what it was…until the ending. I just don’t understand the need for all of these remakes to have “happy endings”. Especially in a movie where it already makes sense not to have one. 13: Game of Death’s ending was much more impactful because he had given up everything to do all these horrific things and still at the very end he loses to his dad killing him. In 13 Sins he essentially got away with all of it because he lives. I guess it works for the opposites of the two characters, with the main character in 13 Sins having a rough life, yet not an outright terrible one, but what about his fiance? She gets to live with that type of person not knowing who he is or what he’s done? Is the horror then meant for her? She was barely in the movie to actually be that much of relevance in the writer’s mind that it doesn’t seem like that was the main objective. I will say that the execution of the ending worked a bit more for the remake than the original. The betrayals and surprises were a bit more upsetting because the characters had more bearing and had been setup more than the original. In the original focused on what the dad had done, but he was not an active part of his life during the majority of the movie so when he appears at the end you don’t get the same sense of betrayal, mostly because you barely know it’s him.

I also found that the absence of a character like Tong in the remake was a shame. Since 13 Sins had established him in a pretty good relationship - even at the end - there was no need for a central character like her to be used and to follow him around. Tong served as the constant reminder that there was someone who cared about Phuchit and was constantly trying to get him to come back from the dark and yet he could never see her. Phuchit spends most of his life doing things for others never believing or seeing what is there in front of him, which makes his character much more pitiful. While the US remake aimed to work that into the plot, they didn’t spend enough time to incorporate it well. Most of the time it wasn’t that he didn’t see the fiance as a constant there to help and support, she was just an obstacle in him trying to accomplish each game without being caught.

-End Spoilers-

In the end, I do really like that 13 Sins didn’t try to be 13: Game of Death as much as a lot of other remakes try to. It took the work and made it its own, and some of the character choices and relationships worked much better for a Western audience and the tone they were focusing the move on. 13: Game of Death still outshines Sins in its writing and set up of the characters and pacing for me, but I would still recommend giving both a shot.

Both 13: Game of Death and 13 Sins can be found on Tubi.

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31 Days of Asian Horror: The Eye (2002) vs The Eye (2008)

I tried to make some sort of “eye for an eye” pun but just couldn’t make it work.

Today I’m pairing the original horror film from 2002 directed by brothers Danny and Oxide Pang, The Eye, and it’s 2008 US remake of the same name (directed by David Moreau and Xavier Palud) to talk more about them and discuss the differences between the two films and what I thought did - or didn’t - work. While I am going to try my best to keep out of major spoilers, I might have to venture into that land for a bit. Most of the movies I have picked for this month were selected beforehand, but this became a last-minute add when I sat down to watch the Pang Brother’s original the other night and was curious what the remake looked like. I had never actually seen the remake before watching, the movie came out my senior year of college and as a theatre major there was no way I had extra time for anything. But the movie is one of those from the 2000s that I would have gravitated towards if I had the time.

The two aren’t identical, which I will discuss below, the basic premise is the same for both. The main character has been blind for most of her life, and after receiving cornea implant surgery so that she would be able to see again, she starts noticing people and places that no one else can see and tries to figure out why it is happening to her.

Note: Since the remake shares the same name as the original, for purposes of this post when I refer to The Eye I’m talking about the 2002 version.

While both movies stay close to each other’s main storyline, I found that the interpretations of the remake were off and sometimes it effected the rest of the storyline. Take for instance the importance of the transplant surgery. In the original, the transplant is there for her and in the remake it’s almost like it’s there for the world. In The Eye she was part of a blind orchestra, and regaining sight meant that she lost her place and that aspect of normal life would be taken away from her, yet in the remake she’s not part of any special orchestra, she is the shining star both before and after the surgery. A lot of the remake tries to point towards her disability, as if to enforce how special she is when the character herself is very humble towards everything and the opportunity she was given.

This becomes a problem towards the middle of the movie when she is starting to collapse mentally because of the amount of ghosts she’s seeing. The remake tries to integrate it into the story that it was her against the world, when in the original those around her are concerned. She’s not seen as abnormally crazy, just not adjusting as well as she could be and it’s much more real. This difference also bleeds into the relationships she has. The Eye’s biggest pull is in the emotion it conveys through the characters. While there is tension and horror associated with the ghosts she sees, the movie constantly falls back to the human side. Her friendship with the young cancer patient and her relationship with the doctor bring the movie back into a grounded emotional state that we just don’t see with the remake. Her relationships are rushed in the remake and we don’t get a sense of who they are or who she is, more on what she is doing. Part of this could be that the focus was less on the characters, but it’s also due to pacing. For a shorter film, The Eye is excellent at it, giving you the information you need while allowing the relationships to mean something, even when the characters haven’t had much storytime together. The Pang brother’s are able to fill a moment with a lot of meaning and while watching the US remake (especially directly after) the drastic differences in the two are felt and you can really feel the unevenness of the pacing. The plot of the remake rushes to integrate these points, which is just not an obstacle for the original film.

The remake’s greatest misstep is shown in how it handles the way that she sees the ghosts. In the remake, there is an undertaker-type figure that she constantly sees is much more exaggerated because it focuses on death being the monster of the movie. The original makes a point to focus on the realness of death and that life has ending that must be accepted - no matter who it is. It’s not some crazy monster and neither good nor evil, just a part of life that is shown through the events at the end of the movie. The Eye’s main moral is that life is based on your outlook, and while the remake kind of gets there at the end it doesn’t do a whole lot to justify it and a lot of the changes that they make, specifically at the ending, don’t really work.

While I do think the remake is a good story on it’s own, it’s hard to not compare it to the original. I know I spent this entire comparison on all the points I didn’t like about the remake, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I didn’t enjoy it. If you are looking for a more action based film that focuses more on the gruesome haunts and frights without grounding itself in reality then its a good movie to watch. The set up is scary, and I don’t think Jessica Alba is bad in the role. It’s a perfectly fine one-off movie that wraps up nicely and wasn’t bad. I do like that it stayed pretty close to the overall stoyline from the original and do think that a good portion of what was changed was to make it fit with the audience they were shooting for. And there’s nothing wrong with that. In the end, the biggest difference between the two was where they focused the character’s motivations and emotions. The Eye took situations and grounded it in that emotion, while the remake would use it to heighten the superficial horror.

The Eye has two sequels: The Eye 2 and The Eye 10, both directed by the brothers. Besides the American remake it has spawned two other remakes: A Tamil version called Adhu and a Hindi version Naina.

The original is currently only available on DVD, but the remake is streaming on Peacock.

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