It'd be a little bit tricky if we had a longhaired boy! 
Hideo Nakata's Ringu franchise inspired a film trend in so-called 'J-Horror', emphasising mystery and dread over gore and special effects. Western audiences were as thrilled as the Japanese home crowd and soon enough Hollywood had snapped up the remake rights. American director Gore Verbinski made The Ring in 2002, but the sequel finds Nakata back on old ground. Here he explains why he opted for more CGI in his US version of The Ring Two.
Was there anything you would have done differently to Gore Verbinski in his remake of The Ring?
I really liked The Ring. I think Gore kept a similar atmospheric feeling in the movie. Actually I met him on the set and he told me that he respected my style pretty much, so key scenes were similar. But scenes like on the ferryboat when the horse goes crazy and commits suicide, were wonderfully shot. I heard that the horse was a mixture of real footage and CGI and because I don't have that scene at all in Ringu, I enjoyed seeing it. If I wanted to do something different, it's probably story-wise after Naomi [Watts] goes to the island. It might have been slightly different from there, but it's really impossible to imagine from today's point-of-view.
The storyline of Ringu 2 is significantly different to The Ring Two, but what was the challenge in remaking your own film?
I thought the script was very simple but very strong. It's all about the mother, the child, and the ghost - like a love triangle. And the fact that The Ring Two has a completely different story from Ringu 2 attracted me. It's different enough, but I was very careful not to repeat myself because there are, of course, some similarities because it is based on the same material. I just thought it was different enough with some new, interesting elements, so why not? That was it basically.
Were you excited about having a bigger budget this time around?
Yes. Probably the biggest difference was having more visual effects. We can't afford intensive and long CGI sequences in Japan so that was challenging and new to me.
What's your feeling about using CGI to create horror - can it sometimes ruin the suspense?
Of course I was very careful that digital shots wouldn't look like digital effects. It should be subtle. But yeah, obviously this movie has scenes that may look like CGI. Ideally, if the audience isn't bothered by it, I mean if it looks real, that's the ideal situation for me. I wouldn't like to show off with it because I'm in Hollywood. It should feel natural. I usually don't like to put the camera in a very unrealistic position. In some big-budget movies they put the camera in an impossible position with the computer - like following a bomb down on to a ship - and that causes a shock of course, but it's too unnatural. I think the camera should give a realistic point-of-view.
Why is the little girl with long, black hair covering her face such an enduring image in Asian horror films?
I have to say that after the success of Ringu this image became more popular. To hide something and to stimulate the audience's imagination by covering up her face worked pretty well in Ringu so other directors wanted to do the same thing. Little girls are maybe more vulnerable than little boys and so they feel closer to another world. It'd be a little bit tricky if we had a longhaired boy!
You've got two more US horror movies on the slate, but there's also a crime thriller [called Out] on the horizon. Are you keen to show Hollywood you can do other things?
Unfortunately my non-horror movies are not as famous as my horror movies, but in Japan I've made two documentary movies and I made a couple of straight dramas - one of them is a melodrama - and a crime suspense movie. I just don't want to put myself in a small box. I think I can make different kinds of movies. Of course it is not just the Hollywood film studios but audience expectations that say, "Okay, he's really good at horror filmmaking, so that's what we want." But I can do other things.
You're a fan of classic American melodrama. Would you like to make one yourself?
Yes, of course I would, but it would be a long shot to achieve that. It wouldn't be that easy because I can't make those kinds of movies in America without thinking of the box office. It would have to be a very low-budget movie, but I will get there.
