Ringu

"One curse, one cure, one week to find it"

Today we enter into the dark paths of Japanese horror movies. It is said that the asian cinema is very hard to swallow by our western minds. When they tell us about asian culture we think of martial arts, chop suey, sushi, geisha, technology and animé, so thinking of japanese horror movies is certainly not in our regular minds. The now cult japanese horror genre AKA J-Horror is something quite familiar not only to films enthusiasts but to average movie goers as well. The year 1998, the director Hideo Nakata and the film Ringu (The Ring) Probably before Hideo Nakata filmed Ringu he was somehow quite an unknown movie director in our side of the hemisphere. Nakata didn't create the Ringu story from scratch. In fact the movie is based  in the Koji Suzuki novel of the same name. The movie had such an impact in the asian world that soon there was a part 2 and part 3 known as Ringu 0 (my personal favorite) 

I'm sure today everyone knows about the movie because of the American remake The Ring, effectively directed by Gore Verbinski and masterfuly starred by Naomi Watts, but that's another story dudes. I'm not against the remake, in fact, it was through the remake that I had the chance to look for the original japanese film. Now both the original & the remake movie have quite a lot of elements in common, they're slightly different, mostly because of the western point of view and the asian point of view. In both movies, the story has it that there's a home made video tape that runs no longer than a minute, but that has enough power to kill you within seven days, and there's nothing you can do to escape from such a violent fate. The movie begins when a main character relative dies in a way that suggests she saw the video, journalist Reiko tracks down the tape and recklessly watches it. She finds she is under the curse and shows it to her ex-husband to get his help. When her son watches the tape Reiko and Ryuji race against time to discover the meaning behind the curse to be able to lift it.

The plot is good in it's one word description but there are a few holes in it and some elements aren't well explained. However it is a good story to follow as it is a form of a ghost hunt as they try to unravel the mystery. The whole thing has an air of uneasiness about it.

The film has some very scary moments – especially the ending which in case you still haven't had the chance of watching by yourself, I won't spoil it. However for the most part it is just plain creepy – which is even worse. There's no blood or gore – just a real sense of being uncomfortable. The director has seen teen horrors before so he teases us – he has shots of people with doors just over their shoulder, or the TV lingering in the rear of the shot – knowing that we are conditioned to expect something to jump out – but then nothing does. Instead the scares come slowly and blatantly really not being shocking but either making your skin crawl or falling asleep within seconds.

Enter Sadako.

Sadako's mum.

"I need to puke so badly"

Sadako's coming for you!

The acting is fair enough all round although Sanada is a little stony at times but he gets better. The real star is the director who uses music and sound effects to get the eerie effect but also uses images that are weird to just creep out the whole film. In fact to watch this movie, you do need to be paying attention to it at all times. The curse videotape gives us plenty of clues to find out about the mysterious girl only known as Sadako. The lady in the videotape happens to be Sadako's mother, a key to explain the important elements involved in the death of Sadako & her mother. 

Hideo Nakata took some liberties from the original novel and being a horror films connoisseur he didn't use a single cliché from the most influential genre movies. His movie spawned a whole new generation of films made in Japan that were about dead children ghosts, however his Ringu trilogy remains as probably the most internationaly influential J-horror saga. There are neither gore scenes nor blood scenes, we just see corpses, and that's a plus in the age of CGI.

School teens either end up fucking in a cabaign or being killed by psychopaths.

"I'm a bit scared"

"Do I look like I'm having fun?"

"I brought this bukkake movie I've been telling you about"

Overall, a great movie but I wouldn't recommend it to everyone around, as the asian horror cinema has a very different personality if compared with the standard American horror family of flicks, so if you're ok with that, you'll enjoy it. If not, you won't understand most of the elements depicted in the movie. I guess is a thing of being opposite cultures. 

I still remember this independent cinema we had in my hometown until some years ago. They made themselves with a copy of Ringu, and as plenty of people had already watched the American remake, there were lots of people looking for tickets when it premiered. I went with my wife and by the first half of the movie, many people had left the cinema. That is why I think there's a culture issue with this movie, although you liked the remake, you just didn't like the original movie. My wife, I and a few others remained until the movie was over and we all liked it because we're open minded people. 

Some time later they premiered Ringu 2 & Ringu 0, being Ringu 2 the one that dissapointed the most from the saga.

here's the movie trailer:

And here's the curse videotape: