HOME | DD

Description
If there was one series that defined the Japanese horror genre, it would be the Ring series. Based on the novels by Koji Suzuki, Ring and its numerous sequels, remakes and adaptations has been scaring people for fifteen years and a big part of Japanese culture, reflecting the spiritual culture of Japan and the fear of technology. The novels themselves are a good read, though only the first book is really a horror, the second and third books Spiral and Loop becoming more medical thrillers than horror, though there are genuine moments of shock, and Loop’s surprise twist is fantastic. Give them a read, they’re worth it. But these reviews are for the films, each different in their own ways and bringing something new to the table. But at the centre of them all is the iconic stringy haired ghost girl Sadako Yamamura, or her American counterpart, Samara Morgan. There was a Korean adaptation of the film, which is more accurate to the book than any other film. Unfortunately, I’ve only seen it once and don’t remember much about, so I won’t be reviewing it.

Ring, or “Ringu” to separate it from the American remake, was directed by Hideo Nakata, one of the masters of Japanese horror alongside Takashi Miike. Nakata would also direct Dark Water, another film based on a novel by Koji Suzuki. The film itself takes a different approach than the book, which explained the series’ curse is actually a mutated smallpox virus which leads to bigger things I’ll tackle in Rasen. This film ditched the scientific revelations and instead focused on the supernatural elements of the series, and changed much of the mythos from the books.

The film opens with two teenagers, Tomoko and Masami, discussing rumours of a cursed videotape that kills you a week after you watch it. That premise sounds very much like something you’d see in a western horror film, and as expected, the cursed tape turns out to be real, with Tomoko getting killed by an unseen entity and Masami is sent to a mental hospital. The film was done on a small budget, so the deaths may look cheap, but they are also effective. Tomoko’s death is built up too, though perhaps not in the same style seen in slasher films. The television turns itself on, she turns it off and turns away, only to hear strange noises and turns around, seeing something that terrifies her and the film suddenly freeze frames and reverses the colours. It is about atmosphere, not gore.

We then meet our main protagonist, Reiko Asakawa, a journalist played by Nanako Matsushima. Asakawa was originally a bloke in the novel, named Kazuyuki, but was not really an interesting character, only gaining my interest after his family watch the tape. Reiko is a more deeper character, struggling to balance her job and role as a mother to her son Yoichi. Throughout the film, we see Reiko neglecting Yoichi even though she is very kind and a good mother when around him, but her job affects her time spent with him. A pattern I noticed is that Yoichi is the one always ringing his mother for attention, but she gently has to let him down. Then when he is in danger, Reiko starts doing stuff for him and begins calling him.

Reiko and Yoichi go to the funeral and we learn Tomoko’s coffin is closed, and we learn in the next scene that she died in a pretty scary way. Reiko speaks to her sister Yoshimi who reveals she found Tomoko in her bedroom closet. We then jump cut to a flashback, showing Yoshimi opening the closet door – revealing the dead Tomoko, her face frozen in a scream. I love this surprise, it’s part jump scare, part atmospheric scare. So Reiko does some investigation and learns three other teenagers died on the same night as Tomoko, and they all spent some time at a resort in Izu. Surprisingly, the campsite is not abandoned and creepy but is popular holiday resort. Reiko talks to the innkeeper and spots the alleged cursed videotape for the first time, but there’s still the question whether or not it is really cursed or not. Well, we quickly find out it is when Reiko watches the video and it is fantastic.

The video actually looks like a recorded tape and someone recorded all these disturbing images – the mysterious man looking down a hole, the mirror scene, a newspaper article with its contents floating about, a weird shot of people crawling away from something accompanied by overlapping murmurs and voices, the infamous “Towel Man” character standing by the shore with a towel covering his face and pointing to something offscreen, a close up of an inhuman eye featuring the kanji word “sada”, and finally an old well in a clearing before the video abruptly ends. The video is about a minute long but that minute is chilling, and is accompanied by really alien noises, like the creepy, metallic insect like noises. Reiko then receives a phone call though there is no one on the line save the weird insect noises, followed by a brief reflection of an unknown spectre in the television, and she realises she is now cursed.

Reiko recruits her ex-husband Ryuji Takayama, a university professor, to help investigate the video and he watches it too. In the books, Ryuji was quite a different character. He was an eccentric man who claimed to have raped several women, and was a bit sadistic, wanting to see the end of mankind just for the hell of it. In the film, he is a calm, quiet and thoughtful person and refers to Reiko by her last name rather than her first. He only shares one scene with Yoichi and they don’t even speak a word, showing how little time they have had to together. It is never explained by Reiko and Ryuji divorced but they get along particularly well with no bad blood, though Ryuji seems to show great care for Yoichi even though he does not play a role in his son’s life. Ryuji watches the tape and the two investigate the tape.

They examine the video scene by scene, discovering a slow motion dialect that translates as “frolic in brine, goblins in thine” and comes from Oshima Island. Ryuji also learns the identity of the mysterious woman on the tape, Shizuko Yamamura, a famed psychic who predicted the eruption of Oshima Island’s volcano. However, she was labelled a fraud during a public demonstration of her powers and committed suicide shortly after. Shizuko had an affair with Dr. Ikuma, a Tokyo University professor who was studied psychic powers and fell in love with her. We later learn they have a daughter named Sadako, who inherited her mother’s powers.

It turns out that Sadako, Shizuko and Dr. Ikuma are based on actual people. Shizuko is based on Chizuko Mifune who was said to have clairvoyant powers and gained the attention of a professor named Dr. Tomokichi Fukurai, who Dr. Ikuma is based on. Fukurai used Chizuko to confirm the existence of extra sensory perception, leading to a fateful demonstration in 1910 where she was branded a fraud. Chizuko never recovered and poisoned herself at the age of twenty-five. But Fukurai wasn’t done yet and took another lady named Ikuko Nagao into his employment. She had the power of Nensha, or thoughtography, the power which Sadako Yamamura has. However, she too was branded a fraud and Ikuko died from a bad fever. Fukurai didn’t stop there, and got a third woman named Sadako Takahashi, who also had nensha powers. Thankfully, Fukurai finally got common sense and called it quits in 1919, though his work lives on in the Fukurai Institute of Psychology.

Anyway, back to the film. The stakes are raised when Reiko catches Yoichi watching the tape and the final shot of the tape lingers longer than usual, showing an arm coming out of the well. Yoichi then drops the bombshell that Tomoko’s ghost told him to watch the tape, implying that perhaps Sadako can control and manipulate the ghosts of her victims. In Ring 2, we see Reiko’s father and Ryuji as ghosts and they appear to be under Sadako’s service in some shape or form. Reiko and Ryuji leave Yoichi in the care of Reiko’s dad and they go to Oshima to speak with Sadako’s uncle Takashi, who is a grouchy old hermit. Ryuji ends up nearly assaulting him and somehow has a psychic flashback of Shizuko’s public demonstration in the 50s. In an eerie black and white scene, a journalist accuses Shizuko of being a fraud and then suddenly drops dead from a heart attack. A young Sadako then flees the stage, her hair hiding her face and she runs to Reiko, who is somehow present in the flashback, and actually grabs her arm, revealing her missing fingertips. Reiko collapses and has a burnt handprint on her arm.

A storm kicks in so it makes it impossible for the heroes to leave the island, but they are determined too since they only have a couple of days left to live. Takashi takes them across the sea, Reiko realising Sadako is likely right where she found the tape – at the Izu campsite. Reiko and Ryuji go to Izu and find the well under one of the buildings and realise Sadako was chucked down it by noneother than Dr. Ikuma, though we don’t find out why until Ring 0. I prefer the way the two deal with the well rather than the American film, they try to remove all the water with buckets rather than just force the protagonist down the well like they did with Rachel Keller. Reiko collapses from carrying all the heavy water so Ryuji sends her down the well to find Sadako’s body. Reiko spends a little time down the well, finding chipped fingernails, revealing Sadako tried to get out the well. Sadako’s hand grabs Reiko and the hairy one herself arises from the water. Reiko takes Sadako in her arms and brushes back her hair, only for it fall off, revealing a skull underneath. This is one of the saddest parts of the series and highlights how sympathetic Sadako can be. Though the skeleton is about the size of a child, even though we see Sadako was at least a young adult when her dad chucks her down the well.

Reiko survives the curse and Ryuji ponders if Dr. Ikuma was actually Sadako’s father or not. This is the biggest mystery of the film continuity – who is Sadako’s father. It is heavily implied that it is some sort of aquatic deity, spirit or monster, since Sadako and Shizuko have close ties to the sea. In the novels, Sadako is the daughter of Dr. Ikuma and the deity involved only giving Shizuko her powers, though it is implied she had sex with it before meeting Dr. Ikuma, and that is where Sadako gained her powers.

It seems everything is going to be alright, with Reiko and Ryuji going home. But this is a horror film, so a happy ending isn’t likely. Ryuji is in his house doing work when weird noises catch his attention. He turns around and sees his TV is on, showing the image of the well. He goes to the TV and watches as Sadako clambers out of the well and begins walking in a disjointed manner towards the “camera”. Ryuji tries to piece together why Sadako is still here and realises just as Reiko calls, so she is listening in via the phone. Then, the big shocker comes. You think Sadako will stop when she reaches the in-video camera, but she doesn’t. She keeps coming, right through the TV screen. I love this scene, it’s my favourite in the whole film and series. It is just so terrifying. Sadako slowly stalks Ryuji across the room and then stares at him, causing him to die of sheer terror and possibly a heart attack.

This moment completely smashes the audience’s belief that Sadako is a completely sympathetic girl whose ghost is just crying out for help, something that is copied to even greater effect in The Ring. But then it turns out Sadako’s spirit is not looking for peace, but for revenge on a worldwide scale. She wants nothing to stop her desire to exact revenge and let the world know of her sufferings. Sadako was played by Rie Inou, a kabuki actress whose creepy walk in the video was accomplished by walking backwards towards the well, which was then reversed to accomplish the eerie way the character walks. Hideo Nakata claims he was inspired by the film Videodrome for this iconic scene, which is not present in the book.

Reiko runs to Ryuji’s apartment and learns he is dead and his body has been removed. She runs into Ryuji’s assistant/student Mai Takano, played by Miki Nakatani, who only has a minor role in this film. Mai is understandably in a state of shock after finding Ryuji’s body, but Reiko just screams at her about the tape. Reiko returns home in a daze and ponders why she survived by Ryuji died. Then, she spots an image of the Towel Man, actually Ryuji, pointing and she realises she survived because she copied the tape and showed it to Ryuji. Knowing Yoichi will share his father’s fate, Reiko calls her father and drives out to him, intending on making an impossible sacrifice for her son, the final shot inspired by the ending of The Terminator, of a rolling storm and darker things are to come.

Ring is the best the series has to offer and is only rivalled in terms of brilliance by Ring 0. It’s likeable characters, use of atmosphere and psychological scares make it one of the greats of the horror genre. The film was done on a limited budget, but what it makes of its own limitations are fantastic with a chilling ending that really paid off for all those involved.

Description
If there was one series that defined the Japanese horror genre, it would be the Ring series. Based on the novels by Koji Suzuki, Ring and its numerous sequels, remakes and adaptations has been scaring people for fifteen years and a big part of Japanese culture, reflecting the spiritual culture of Japan and the fear of technology. The novels themselves are a good read, though only the first book is really a horror, the second and third books Spiral and Loop becoming more medical thrillers than horror, though there are genuine moments of shock, and Loop’s surprise twist is fantastic. Give them a read, they’re worth it. But these reviews are for the films, each different in their own ways and bringing something new to the table. But at the centre of them all is the iconic stringy haired ghost girl Sadako Yamamura, or her American counterpart, Samara Morgan. There was a Korean adaptation of the film, which is more accurate to the book than any other film. Unfortunately, I’ve only seen it once and don’t remember much about, so I won’t be reviewing it.

Ring, or “Ringu” to separate it from the American remake, was directed by Hideo Nakata, one of the masters of Japanese horror alongside Takashi Miike. Nakata would also direct Dark Water, another film based on a novel by Koji Suzuki. The film itself takes a different approach than the book, which explained the series’ curse is actually a mutated smallpox virus which leads to bigger things I’ll tackle in Rasen. This film ditched the scientific revelations and instead focused on the supernatural elements of the series, and changed much of the mythos from the books.

The film opens with two teenagers, Tomoko and Masami, discussing rumours of a cursed videotape that kills you a week after you watch it. That premise sounds very much like something you’d see in a western horror film, and as expected, the cursed tape turns out to be real, with Tomoko getting killed by an unseen entity and Masami is sent to a mental hospital. The film was done on a small budget, so the deaths may look cheap, but they are also effective. Tomoko’s death is built up too, though perhaps not in the same style seen in slasher films. The television turns itself on, she turns it off and turns away, only to hear strange noises and turns around, seeing something that terrifies her and the film suddenly freeze frames and reverses the colours. It is about atmosphere, not gore.

We then meet our main protagonist, Reiko Asakawa, a journalist played by Nanako Matsushima. Asakawa was originally a bloke in the novel, named Kazuyuki, but was not really an interesting character, only gaining my interest after his family watch the tape. Reiko is a more deeper character, struggling to balance her job and role as a mother to her son Yoichi. Throughout the film, we see Reiko neglecting Yoichi even though she is very kind and a good mother when around him, but her job affects her time spent with him. A pattern I noticed is that Yoichi is the one always ringing his mother for attention, but she gently has to let him down. Then when he is in danger, Reiko starts doing stuff for him and begins calling him.

Reiko and Yoichi go to the funeral and we learn Tomoko’s coffin is closed, and we learn in the next scene that she died in a pretty scary way. Reiko speaks to her sister Yoshimi who reveals she found Tomoko in her bedroom closet. We then jump cut to a flashback, showing Yoshimi opening the closet door – revealing the dead Tomoko, her face frozen in a scream. I love this surprise, it’s part jump scare, part atmospheric scare. So Reiko does some investigation and learns three other teenagers died on the same night as Tomoko, and they all spent some time at a resort in Izu. Surprisingly, the campsite is not abandoned and creepy but is popular holiday resort. Reiko talks to the innkeeper and spots the alleged cursed videotape for the first time, but there’s still the question whether or not it is really cursed or not. Well, we quickly find out it is when Reiko watches the video and it is fantastic.

The video actually looks like a recorded tape and someone recorded all these disturbing images – the mysterious man looking down a hole, the mirror scene, a newspaper article with its contents floating about, a weird shot of people crawling away from something accompanied by overlapping murmurs and voices, the infamous “Towel Man” character standing by the shore with a towel covering his face and pointing to something offscreen, a close up of an inhuman eye featuring the kanji word “sada”, and finally an old well in a clearing before the video abruptly ends. The video is about a minute long but that minute is chilling, and is accompanied by really alien noises, like the creepy, metallic insect like noises. Reiko then receives a phone call though there is no one on the line save the weird insect noises, followed by a brief reflection of an unknown spectre in the television, and she realises she is now cursed.

Reiko recruits her ex-husband Ryuji Takayama, a university professor, to help investigate the video and he watches it too. In the books, Ryuji was quite a different character. He was an eccentric man who claimed to have raped several women, and was a bit sadistic, wanting to see the end of mankind just for the hell of it. In the film, he is a calm, quiet and thoughtful person and refers to Reiko by her last name rather than her first. He only shares one scene with Yoichi and they don’t even speak a word, showing how little time they have had to together. It is never explained by Reiko and Ryuji divorced but they get along particularly well with no bad blood, though Ryuji seems to show great care for Yoichi even though he does not play a role in his son’s life. Ryuji watches the tape and the two investigate the tape.

They examine the video scene by scene, discovering a slow motion dialect that translates as “frolic in brine, goblins in thine” and comes from Oshima Island. Ryuji also learns the identity of the mysterious woman on the tape, Shizuko Yamamura, a famed psychic who predicted the eruption of Oshima Island’s volcano. However, she was labelled a fraud during a public demonstration of her powers and committed suicide shortly after. Shizuko had an affair with Dr. Ikuma, a Tokyo University professor who was studied psychic powers and fell in love with her. We later learn they have a daughter named Sadako, who inherited her mother’s powers.

It turns out that Sadako, Shizuko and Dr. Ikuma are based on actual people. Shizuko is based on Chizuko Mifune who was said to have clairvoyant powers and gained the attention of a professor named Dr. Tomokichi Fukurai, who Dr. Ikuma is based on. Fukurai used Chizuko to confirm the existence of extra sensory perception, leading to a fateful demonstration in 1910 where she was branded a fraud. Chizuko never recovered and poisoned herself at the age of twenty-five. But Fukurai wasn’t done yet and took another lady named Ikuko Nagao into his employment. She had the power of Nensha, or thoughtography, the power which Sadako Yamamura has. However, she too was branded a fraud and Ikuko died from a bad fever. Fukurai didn’t stop there, and got a third woman named Sadako Takahashi, who also had nensha powers. Thankfully, Fukurai finally got common sense and called it quits in 1919, though his work lives on in the Fukurai Institute of Psychology.

Anyway, back to the film. The stakes are raised when Reiko catches Yoichi watching the tape and the final shot of the tape lingers longer than usual, showing an arm coming out of the well. Yoichi then drops the bombshell that Tomoko’s ghost told him to watch the tape, implying that perhaps Sadako can control and manipulate the ghosts of her victims. In Ring 2, we see Reiko’s father and Ryuji as ghosts and they appear to be under Sadako’s service in some shape or form. Reiko and Ryuji leave Yoichi in the care of Reiko’s dad and they go to Oshima to speak with Sadako’s uncle Takashi, who is a grouchy old hermit. Ryuji ends up nearly assaulting him and somehow has a psychic flashback of Shizuko’s public demonstration in the 50s. In an eerie black and white scene, a journalist accuses Shizuko of being a fraud and then suddenly drops dead from a heart attack. A young Sadako then flees the stage, her hair hiding her face and she runs to Reiko, who is somehow present in the flashback, and actually grabs her arm, revealing her missing fingertips. Reiko collapses and has a burnt handprint on her arm.

A storm kicks in so it makes it impossible for the heroes to leave the island, but they are determined too since they only have a couple of days left to live. Takashi takes them across the sea, Reiko realising Sadako is likely right where she found the tape – at the Izu campsite. Reiko and Ryuji go to Izu and find the well under one of the buildings and realise Sadako was chucked down it by noneother than Dr. Ikuma, though we don’t find out why until Ring 0. I prefer the way the two deal with the well rather than the American film, they try to remove all the water with buckets rather than just force the protagonist down the well like they did with Rachel Keller. Reiko collapses from carrying all the heavy water so Ryuji sends her down the well to find Sadako’s body. Reiko spends a little time down the well, finding chipped fingernails, revealing Sadako tried to get out the well. Sadako’s hand grabs Reiko and the hairy one herself arises from the water. Reiko takes Sadako in her arms and brushes back her hair, only for it fall off, revealing a skull underneath. This is one of the saddest parts of the series and highlights how sympathetic Sadako can be. Though the skeleton is about the size of a child, even though we see Sadako was at least a young adult when her dad chucks her down the well.

Reiko survives the curse and Ryuji ponders if Dr. Ikuma was actually Sadako’s father or not. This is the biggest mystery of the film continuity – who is Sadako’s father. It is heavily implied that it is some sort of aquatic deity, spirit or monster, since Sadako and Shizuko have close ties to the sea. In the novels, Sadako is the daughter of Dr. Ikuma and the deity involved only giving Shizuko her powers, though it is implied she had sex with it before meeting Dr. Ikuma, and that is where Sadako gained her powers.

It seems everything is going to be alright, with Reiko and Ryuji going home. But this is a horror film, so a happy ending isn’t likely. Ryuji is in his house doing work when weird noises catch his attention. He turns around and sees his TV is on, showing the image of the well. He goes to the TV and watches as Sadako clambers out of the well and begins walking in a disjointed manner towards the “camera”. Ryuji tries to piece together why Sadako is still here and realises just as Reiko calls, so she is listening in via the phone. Then, the big shocker comes. You think Sadako will stop when she reaches the in-video camera, but she doesn’t. She keeps coming, right through the TV screen. I love this scene, it’s my favourite in the whole film and series. It is just so terrifying. Sadako slowly stalks Ryuji across the room and then stares at him, causing him to die of sheer terror and possibly a heart attack.

This moment completely smashes the audience’s belief that Sadako is a completely sympathetic girl whose ghost is just crying out for help, something that is copied to even greater effect in The Ring. But then it turns out Sadako’s spirit is not looking for peace, but for revenge on a worldwide scale. She wants nothing to stop her desire to exact revenge and let the world know of her sufferings. Sadako was played by Rie Inou, a kabuki actress whose creepy walk in the video was accomplished by walking backwards towards the well, which was then reversed to accomplish the eerie way the character walks. Hideo Nakata claims he was inspired by the film Videodrome for this iconic scene, which is not present in the book.

Reiko runs to Ryuji’s apartment and learns he is dead and his body has been removed. She runs into Ryuji’s assistant/student Mai Takano, played by Miki Nakatani, who only has a minor role in this film. Mai is understandably in a state of shock after finding Ryuji’s body, but Reiko just screams at her about the tape. Reiko returns home in a daze and ponders why she survived by Ryuji died. Then, she spots an image of the Towel Man, actually Ryuji, pointing and she realises she survived because she copied the tape and showed it to Ryuji. Knowing Yoichi will share his father’s fate, Reiko calls her father and drives out to him, intending on making an impossible sacrifice for her son, the final shot inspired by the ending of The Terminator, of a rolling storm and darker things are to come.

Ring is the best the series has to offer and is only rivalled in terms of brilliance by Ring 0. It’s likeable characters, use of atmosphere and psychological scares make it one of the greats of the horror genre. The film was done on a limited budget, but what it makes of its own limitations are fantastic with a chilling ending that really paid off for all those involved.