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'The American adaptation of the sensationally popular Japanese horror film Ringu (1998)--released in English as The Ring (2002)--started a trend of Hollywood remakes of Asian horror film. Wee (National Univ. of Singapore) uses this trend to analyze cross-cultural adaptation and intercultural influence between Hollywood's and Japan's representations of horror. Wee explores how the values and ideologies expressed in Japanese horror films are altered or rejected in the American adaptation--and how these changes reflect either differing or similar value systems and cultural beliefs. In the introduction and the first two of seven chapters, the author establishes historical context and provides an analytical framework for the text. Subsequent chapters focus on specific themes--visual aesthetics of horror; single mothers and abandoned daughters; apocalyptic visions; and (post)modern anxieties--contrasting a specific J-horror film with its American remake. The result of this type of analysis, according to Wee, is broader understanding not only of social anxieties of a specific period, as reflected in horror films, but also of shifts in a sociocultural environment over time. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.' T S. Yamada, CHOICE

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Associate Professor Valerie Wee teaches film and media studies in the Department of English Language and Literature at the National University of Singapore.

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