Responsible for multiple sequels, American remakes, a cross-over, and now a Netflix series, The Ring and The Grudge represent the mass popularity of Japanese horror. Both are cultural touchstones to a point where their American remakes at the very least make the attempt to translate it as best they could.
It shows. There can be no denying that these franchises would be nothing without their Japanese predecessors. The creep-factor in these films are dialed to ten. It is only a question of which films scares you the most.
The Grudge: Dramatic Irony
The Grudge used its nonlinear structure to present a sense of foreboding. Before the audience saw what happened to the new occupants of the house, you saw the aftermath. An abandoned old woman whose caretakers were gone.
The Grudge weaved a tale that you are never safe. Once you found out what happened to the tenants in the Saeki house, it was all the more terrifying that you were powerless to stop it.
The Ring: The Story Is Meta
Released in a culture obsessed with media, The Ring was a perfect answer. Not only did it capitalize on the fear that the movie you were watching would kill you, but it also did so in a movie itself. The audience watched characters drop off one by one all the while intercutting frames of the ring of the well.
The Ring suggested that you were watching the film yourself and like the characters, powerless to stop the inevitable. Death at the hands of a vengeful child.
The Grudge: The Curse Is Born From Human Violence
Unlike many supernatural horror films, the curse that haunted the Saeki house was not a unique situation. This specific curse was created when violence came out of an intense amount of rage or sorrow. While this created corporeal ghosts that never leave you alone, the reason this violence happened was unfortunately commonplace.
Many families experience domestic abuse. The Grudge used a common theme. A theme that in its own right is terrifying. A husband killed his wife thinking that she had cheated on him and created a cycle of violence that would never end. The fact that it was created out of a misplaced sense of jealousy was the most terrifying of all.
The Ring: Precocious Children
The Omen had Damien. The Shining had Danny. The Ring had not one but two creepy children. Samara was the instigator of the curse of the videotape. Her powers were able to sear images into being real. But she wasn’t the only terrifying child.
Samara had a connection with Rachel’s young son, Aiden. Aiden was self-sufficient and rarely needed a guiding hand. He was the one to tell his mother that they couldn’t help Samara. All she wanted to do was hurt people.
The Grudge: You Are Not Safe In The Daylight
Many horror movies find comfort in daylight. Horror lives in a realm of darkness. Serial killers and ghosts normally only come out at night since they can hide in the shadows. The ghosts of The Grudge are not beholden to that.
Their grip on fear and rage are so astounding that they can find their victims any time, any place. If you have intersected with the place where the ghosts died, you cannot escape the traumatizing sounds of cat meows mingling with children’s vocal cords.
The Ring: Adults Hate Children
You would be hard-pressed to find an adult in The Ring that didn’t flagrantly disregard the person-hood of children. Rachel’s son Aiden was the lowest on the scale. She loved her son but often could not find him worth attention.
Samara was the most glaring example. She was aware of her penchant and prowess for pain, though she could not control it. This meant nothing to her adoptive parents. As hard as they tried, they hated their child and threw her down a well.
The Grudge: The Ghosts Are Corporeal
Unlike most stories surrounding hauntings, these ghosts had solid form. The rage and pain that created the curse were so visceral that it cemented their spirits on the physical plane.
The ghosts contorted and squeezed into horrifying shapes and nothing could dissuade them. Even possession was not off the table. These ghosts could do everything and more.
The Ring: You Can Only Survive By Spreading The Video Tapes
Rachel was committed to the fact that she was going to be killed by the videotape. But it didn’t come to pass. She only discovered what that meant when she went back to her apartment. Samara wanted her word to be spread. Rachel had made a copy of the tape and shown it to someone else.
Noah reaped the consequences while Rachel could go on. The survival of her child was paramount. The only way to save Aiden was to have him copy the tape and show it to someone else. There is no estimate on what his therapy bills will cost him in the future.
The Grudge: You Will Never Be Free
The curse of the grudge is so powerful, that there is never a resolution. Through many American made horror films, the characters eventually win the day. Even if there are sequels, most horror films end with catharsis.
The Grudge did not do this. There was never a sense of safety. If you interact with the grudge for even a moment, you were marked forever. The curse was born in the house where the family died, but it wasn’t stuck there. Even when the characters thought they were safe for days or even years, the grudge always found them.
The Ring: It Doesn’t Matter Where Samara’s Powers Came From
In the Japanese iterations of The Ring, Samara’s counterpart Sadako had a backstory. It was filled with a tragic story of being born from a psychic mother. That was not explained in The Ring until the 2017 sequel, Rings when Samara was given her own origin story.
That was not necessary. The tragedy of Samara was not just that she couldn’t control her powers, but her adoptive mother could not control her contempt for her. No matter how Samara obtained her powers it would never stop the conclusion of her story.
