in the original book, instead of a reporter and her ex-husband investigating the tape, it's a reporter and a friend from school and his friend, it turns out, is a serial rapist that gloats about his crimes to the main character and the main character does nothing about it, in fact at one point, he invites the bastard into the home he shares with his wife and daughter and it's just repugnant. THEN, when the rapist dies, we get forcefed a redemption arc where we get told he lied about raping women because he was a virgin and he ends up saving the day and I'm just nonplussed by the whole thing. It's annoying because it completely ruined the book for me when the core story and it's differences to the story we all know are quite fascinating. Like, there's no ghosts coming out of the TV this time, Sadako/Samara doesn't actually appear at all, and everything that happens has nothing to do with ghosts but her psychic powers going out of control in death.