The mid to late 1990s were a good time for horror. Scream revitalised the flagging slasher sub-genre and successfully mixed satire and horror; The Blair Witch Project brought something new to horror for the first time in years, and horror films from countries other than the USA and UK started coming to the fore again. One of the most well-known (or is it infamous?) of these was Hideo Nakata's Ringu, which simultaneously freaked a generation out and made people sit up and notice Asian horror with new eyes.
Reiko is a journalist investigating an urban legend circulating among teens about a cursed video tape. The story goes that anyone who watches the tape is cursed and dies seven days later. Her investigation gets personal when she learns that her niece Tomoko and three of her friends have apparently become the latest victims of the curse, and her investigations uncover the cursed tape in question. She watches it, of course (otherwise the film would have been considerably shorter) and promptly gets a phone call confirming that she is now scheduled to die in seven days unless she can break the curse. In her attempt to break the curse and save her life Reiko calls on her ex-husband Ryuji for help and the two of them attempt to trace the origins of the video tape and break the curse before Reiko's seven days are up.
Seventeen years on it's hard to find someone who doesn't know of the way Ringu ends, between the remake and it being regularly voted one of the top ten scariest moments in cinema by various bodies, but back when the film first came out it shocked people across the globe (but just in case you honestly don't know what happens at the end of Ringu and plan on watching it blind at some point, consider this review full of spoilers). Certainly in my case, when that moment occurred at the film's climax I turned into a gibbering wreck for a few moments and actually ran out of the room (until I got a hold of myself and reminded myself that it was just a movie, dammit). In that moment the film effectively breaks the fourth wall; suddenly the viewer doesn't feel nearly as safe watching when there's now the possibility of the film's antagonist abruptly climbing out of the television to kill you. It's also an example of how sometimes low-tech effects can be much more effective than high-tech CGI and the like - the effect of Sadako's disturbing walk and movements as she crawls out and advances on her victim were achieved simply by having a Kabuki actor be filmed walking backwards. They then played the video in reverse, and thus Sadako's unique and creepy movements were born.
Of course, while the film is best known for that climactic scene, there's more to the film than that. There's a kind of slow creeping terror that builds throughout the film as Reiko and Ryuji try to break the curse - especially as we've seen the effects that the tape has on its victims in the case of Tomoko and her unfortunate friend who only caught a glimpse of Sadako and yet went insane from it. Our protagonists are likable enough that we certainly don't want the same fate to befall them (and may I also say that it's nice to have likable, realistic protagonists in films, and I wish more films would bring this back). However, as we learn more about the origins of the tape and about Sadako and her mother, we also start to feel sorry for her as well - well, almost. She might not have chosen her life or how it ended, but she also was killing people with her death glare long before she ended up in that well, so there's only so much sympathy we can muster for her. Finally, the twist in the ending is a neat one - obscure enough in the plot that most people probably won't see it coming, and yet it makes perfect sense in the end.
If there's any flaw with Ringu, it's that sometimes some of the aspects of Japanese culture that figure into the plot don't translate too well to us Westerners, but it's not a big issue and certainly doesn't detract very much at all from the film at large. Also, it's subtitled, which apparently marks it down for some people, but unless you have sight problems or are illiterate I don't consider that an excuse to dislike a film. So in conclusion: great film; terrifying the first time you see it; well worth the chance of dying mysteriously seven days after watching it.
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