I think if I had a blurb on RottenTomatoes.com, it would read:

While the obvious dumbing-down of the original story a la "The Ring" is present, the important thing is the spirit of loneliness and depression also remains intact.

This pretty much sums up my feelings towards the remake. What I had to get past when I watched the original was that it wasn't a scare a minute jump fest, it was a detailed, sometimes rambling story that was more about the separation of humans despite our abilities to be more connected.

I think a lot of reviewers missed this when they gave it such awful marks. Yeah, it is very dumbed down, to where they even spell everything out in a final scene. Everything was implied in the original, but it wasn't THAT hard to figure out. But again American audiences are stupid apparently so we need to be spoon fed all the damn answers.

Another problem is that for some reason they attempted to do (again typically) a lot of 'jump scares.' The movie has great atmosphere, and a sense of creepiness, why would you smash all that with a cheap "eek" that doesn't even work? I mean, ghosts coming out of a washer? Not only does it not make sense or serve a purpose, but it looked ridiculous.

A lot of people knocked the acting, which I didn't find all that terrible, considering the fact that the movie is about loneliness in a connected world. I really don't think people are catching this...this is not just a horror movie, nor was the original. If you watch it for that, as I did the original, you'll be disappointed. The acting (it's not great by any means, don't get me wrong) is all low-key to go with the theme that everyone is already feeling the effects of the Pulse, whether they know it or not, because "the pulse" is really how we are all separated from each other and are losing our humanity.

I still prefer the original but if you can't find that version this might be worth a rental...just try and ignore all the completely stupid and useless jump scares.

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