Quote Originally Posted by Necronopticous
Another difference in the remake I thought was sort of lame was the ending. In the original, as was previously mentioned, there is less giveaways and the story is really ambiguous. I, for one, really liked the ambiguity of the original and thought alot of the "sense-making" was unnecessary. In the remake she tries to burn down the house, etc. And then the movie ends in that hospital or whatever. In the original, they all die, there is never an attempt to destroy the house, and then the movie ends with a pan to the attic of the dead woman... slowly creep in on her face... Then her eyes pop open "ehhh~hhh~hhh~hhh" cut to black. >> Credits roll. Perfect ending in my opinion. Although the remake one was decent also.
Actually, the detective does try to burn down the house in the Japanese movie, but fails since he is distracted by a noise, but this happens way before the end of the movie, Rika (the Karen character in the Japanese film) doesn't revisit the house again until the end. The ending from the American movie was taken from the first TV movie. It's pretty similar with the hair growing out of the bed and everything, though I don't remember the specifics.

I thought the crazy ambiguity of the original Japanese movies was so confusing, it made me dislike them. Rika comes to some sort of revelation at the end of the last movie about looking at the ghost through your hands, but I couldn't figure out what the heck she had figured out. Then the husband comes out and kills her, but he's not all pale and white, leading me to believe he's not a ghost, but he obviously died before. It was really confusing.