heh...to bounce back to Vanilla Sky, the disfigured dude was incredibly dumb-looking in Abre los Ojos.
I thought the Ring was an excellent--perhaps near-perfect--blend of the "horror" and "terror" genres. I tend to like horror movies tremendously and not so much terror movies, but horror movies with terror elements are very cool. the design and cinematography were excellently-done, and that's what I'll be watching for in Ringu. (Japanese scripts/dialogues are, almost universally, garbage. I think they're even "smartened up" for American audiences, yet still retain overt expository dialogue, excessive descriptions of things as "nice", etc.)