Are the "The original is scarier!!" people just hipsters?

After all these years, I finally saw Ringu.
The Ring on the other hand, I have seen back then and it seriously scared me and stayed with me for many weeks because the story of Samara fascinated me deeply and the movie really left its marks on my mind, compared to most horror movies.

Over all these years I always heard "the original is so much better!" and "the original is so much more scary!", so I was excited to finally see it.

Well...

I can only disagree with these claims and wonder where they are coming from.
Ringu's Sadako is barely shown, basically just once. And when we finally see her, her gown is perfectly clean and in mint condition, her hair is fine, her skin sure looks off but nothing crazy and all there really is to indicate this is basically a well-body, are the missing nails (who also look a bit lazy, make-up wise). Then the big moment comes, the "face-reveal". Samara's horrible face is seared into my memory... Sadako's eye on the other hand...not that much. Yeah sure, creepy and "not human", but how is this scarier than Samara who really looks like she was dead inside a well for a long time?

The Ring has way more and way better effects, like the play with water, the fly on the screen that becomes real, the tape is longer, more detailed and way creepier, the investigation scenes at the farm (like the crazy suicide) and all that. The story of the horses committing suicide due to Samara's presence, the suffering we learn Samara had to endure etc. etc.

We learn so much more about Samara's back story and we actually learn it through discovery by the protagonist, compared to some psychic who just senses stuff and fills in the plot for us without any effort it seems.

Then there is Hans Zimmer's really good and distressing soundtrack, relying almost exclusively on classical instruments.

Aiden is legitimately creepy and he has this connection with Samara which is basically an extra side-plot compared to Yoichi who is just... there, being a sweet boy.

While of course, it always boils down to "taste" (and thus bias), I really think the above is an objective analysis and comparison that leaves personal preferences out of it as much as possible. I have no horse in this race.

So I wondered, all these people who claim Ringu is "so much better"... are they just 'hipsters' more or less? It seems to me they just *want* the Japanese version to be better and scarier because well, it is the Japanese version, the original, the first and perhaps most importantly: Not Hollywood. Let's not forget: "Hollywood bad!" (what a dumb thing to say...).

The main reason why I come to this conclusion is the lack of explanation as to why the original is better and scarier. Better is a difficult term here, but scarier? Seriously... how? The Ring has so many creepy scenes, and I mean creepy, not "sudden jump scare in your face" kind of garbage.
Ringu has what... 2-3 scenes that are really creepy? And even these are really tame in comparison.

I somewhere read "yeah how she climbs out of the well and moves is so creepy!" uhm...yeah... and did you see how fucked up it was in The Ring? Ringu seems like stage-play in comparison.


I enjoyed both, but I cannot see for the life of me why people would claim Ringu is, in any way, superior.