Time for some 2000’s nostalgia, although we’re not gonna be
looking at any of the fun things about that decade. Instead, we’ll be having a
good, long gander at the 2000’s J-horror remake trend. It was one of the
weirder bits of cultural exchange this side of the new millennium, with Western
filmmakers (primarily Sam Raimi and Gore Verbinski, among others) remaking
classic Japanese horror films, the results of which were mostly utter garbage. While
Verbinski’s The Ring was an okay geographical shift, the rest of the mass
including Pulse, One Missed Call, The Eye, Mirrors, and even the Raimi-produced
Grudge remake brings down the median. Like, really brings it down. And
with this latest, decidedly-American revival of one of the main pillars in that
trend, I can’t help but question whatever point this was meant to serve.
