Ringu

Name: Ringu (Japanese)

Director: Hideo Nakata

Release Date: January 31 1998

Tagline: “One curse, one cure, one week to find it…”

Introduction:

At last, a movie I’m sure all my readers actually recognize! If you can’t tell, I prefer to write about movies that you might not have heard about yet, so this will probably be the only “big name” horror that I will review, because most likely, you’ve heard all there is to hear about the other ones—Ju-on, Dark Water, Kairo (Pulse), and basically anything else that America has remade. If you haven’t seen the American remakes of these movies, please watch the originals first! I’ve learned from personal experience that watching an American remake will most likely ruin your experience when later viewing the original movie.

Ringu is based off of a book of the same title by Koji Suzuki, who is probably the Japanese equivalent of Stephen King.

Synopsis:

Two teenager girls are talking about an urban legend where a mysterious videotape kills people a week after they see it. Soon afterwards, one of these girls, Tomoko, dies along with three of her friends. Tomoko’s aunt, Asakawa Reiko, is a reporter who is coincidentally writing a story about the same video tape, and upon discovering that Tomoko and her friends died at the same time, she investigates the circumstances of their death and discover that the friends were all at a resort together in Izu, where they originally found the strange video tape.

She goes to the resort and watches the same video tape, and unfortunately exposes it to her young son and her ex-husband. With the help of her ex-husband, she tries to discover a cure of the curse that she has unwittingly inflicted upon herself and those closest to her.

Review:

This movie is better, as far as plot goes, than the American remake by far. The plot is difficult to follow at times, but there’s something grittier about it that the glossy American version just doesn’t have. I also liked the atmosphere better, because it makes the movie seem all the more believable.

I don’t have much to say about it overall though, because I’m sure you’ve heard it all before. The plot is stunning, and the acting is also fairly amazing. There’s no way you can go wrong with this movie, though it does leave you with more unanswered questions that the American version might. Much of this is resolved in later movies though.

All in all, enjoy! You should definitely watch this before you watch any other versions J

Ratings:
Entertainment: 9
Scares: 9
Gore: 2 (oh, the fingernails…)

*Highly Recommended*