Written By: Jase Marsiglia
The kid picks up the rectangular, black plastic object and flips it over in his hands, puzzled. It’s not a disc. He shakes it, hearing the mechanisms inside rattle. How are you supposed to watch this thing? Then the light bulb flickers in his brain when he sees the white, circular ridges of the wheel hubs on the bottom, just wide enough apart to be level with your eyes. He lifts the tape to his face, aligning his eyes with the wheel hubs, holding it up like that other antiquated device (the View-Master, to you “Gen Alpha” kids), and waits to see what’s inside. His “elder” snatches the tape and shoves it into the VCR, flustered at yet another soul-crushing generational divide that stands as a chasm between the two individuals like opposite ends of the Grand Canyon. This bit of sitcom silliness from my son’s favorite childhood show, "Henry Danger", struck a chord with the adults in the room. Hilarious, yes. Sad? Also… yes.
Kôji Suzuki’s "Ring" novel, published in 1991, about a cursed VHS tape that brought a heart-seizing death to anyone who watched it a week prior, was timely. VHS was an everyday part of life. We bought movies. We used them to record TV shows we might miss. We filmed home movies. They were as common to our everyday lives as sleep; the inevitable threat from "A Nightmare on Elm Street" made "Ring" a more potent, immediate threat in our homes. Hideo Nakata adapted the book for his 1998 film "Ring," and had just coughed its metaphorical “blood” into the handkerchief. It was dying and hadn’t realized it yet. It coexisted for years alongside LaserDisc, but the silver arc of DVD was just beginning to crest over the horizon like a sunrise, and VHS found its days numbered.
Everyday tasks that filmmakers mine for terror, like sleep (Elm Street), swimming (Jaws), and showers (Psycho), could still scare audiences despite decades of distance, but a cursed VHS tape? How would that translate to modern audiences unfamiliar with Sadako’s brand of wrath? It’s easy. The VHS in "Ring" is simply a vessel. A carrier. A host. It’s what’s inside, yet to be viewed, that does the damage. In this sense, the unmarked tape of Sadako’s hatred is Pandora’s Box. Once unsealed, the havoc begins, making the VHS as deadly as a chain letter, a virus downloaded to your computer, a germ that attacks your body. The object may be antiquated, but the threat is real. The threat transcends film and, like Sadako’s curse, evolves to new formats. From page to screen, the vicious circle of hatred and death that seeps from that well on Oshima Island crosses from film to digital in Hideo Nakata’s chilling masterpiece…
Ring (1998)
⭐⭐⭐1/2
It started as an urban legend. An unlabeled VHS cassette filled with bizarre, haunting images with no cohesive narrative. It’s only a couple of minutes long, but it feels like a nightmare caught on tape. When it ends, the tape stops, leaving the angry hiss of white noise on a static channel. The sound is suddenly broken by the ringing of your phone, where a young girl’s voice says simply, “Seven days.” In a week, to the minute, you’ll be crippled with such fear that your heart stops, leaving you dead, a silent rictus scream of terror frozen on your face.
It's not the type of story investigative journalist Reiko Asakawa (the impossibly beautiful Nanako Matsushima from the TV romantic drama series "A Story of Love") necessarily wants, but it’s the type of story she keeps getting saddled with. It becomes personal, though, when her teenage niece Tomoko dies of a heart attack a week after she and her friends came back from Oshima Island in the Izu Peninsula, all of whom happened to have died of fright on the exact same day, at the exact same minute. Traveling to the island and checking into the inn they stayed at, she finds the blank VHS tape, watches it, and just as the urban legend describes, she receives the cryptic two-word phone call.
Now, with an insidious paranormal ritual set in motion, Reiko enlists the aid of her ex-husband Ryūji (Matsushima’s "A Story of Love" co-star Hiroyuki Sanada), a university professor with a slight touch of psychic ability, to help her race the clock to uncover the secrets behind who created the tape and how to stop the curse before it’s too late. What they uncover is a history of human experimentation, murder, and a telepathic rage that extends far beyond the grave.
WATCH THE ORIGINAL TRAILER FOR "RING" BELOW
At nearly $20 million at the box office, "Ring" aka "RINGU" became one of Hong Kong’s highest-grossing films and a cultural juggernaut that, like the rage of its child protagonist Sadako, spread like a virus across international waters. Horror in Japan was never a genre contender in international markets until "Ringu", and while many horror films were certainly made there, they tended to focus more on the extreme aspects of gore and violence (for example, the infamous "Guinea Pig" films of the 80s), when we’re not counting the enormous success of kaiju films like "Godzilla" and its sequels.
But Kôji Suzuki’s novel, the script by Hiroshi Takahashi, and the slick direction by Hideo Nakata were harkening back to Japanese folklore involving yūrei, or a type of ghost. In this case, the yūrei in question, Sadako, would be an onryō, a “vengeful spirit,” previously seen in popular 60s horror films like "Kwaidan" and "The Ghost Story of Yotsuya". These vengeful ghosts would often take the appearance of a woman with pale skin and black hair draped messily over her face, mostly concealing her visage, an image that would quickly become synonymous with the “J-Horror” movement of the late 90s and early 2000s.
While many look to "Ring" as the beginning of this movement, it was simply the most popular and successful example of it, blending terrifying folk horror from Japan’s past with the isolating technology of the modern day and holding the floodgates open for similar films like "Ju-On: The Grudge", "Dark Water" (also by Nakata), "The Eye", "Reincarnation", "Kaidan", "Pulse", "Tomie", "One Missed Call", and dozens of others. So prevalent was this movement that other countries, especially America, would adapt remakes of these films, or, as was the case in South Korea, adapt some of the tropes and implement them into their own horrors, such as "A Tale of Two Sisters", "Spider Forest", "Cello", "Phone", or "0.0 MHz".
It simply cannot be understated how culturally significant "Ring" is and remains nearly 30 years later. It’s not as aggressively frightening as its 2002 American counterpart, itself a terrific and faithful remake in its own right, but "Ringu" is a master class of dread, filled with eerie, unshakable imagery, a somber, tragic mood, and more chills per scene than most horror films can generate in an entire runtime. It truly is a must-see film for horror fans to revisit or discover for the first time, and is as important and influential a horror film to the East as "The Exorcist" is to the West, cementing itself as the blueprint for a new wave of Hong Kong horrors.
HOME VIDEO
"Ring" certainly enjoyed a modest home video run in America when DreamWorks released it alongside its 2002 remake on DVD as part of a marketing push to invite people to see the origins of their latest blockbuster. But it wouldn’t be until Arrow Video released a 2019 Limited Edition boxed set in the UK that people were able to take a healthy deep dive into the film and its immediate sequels (Spiral, Ring 2, and Ring 0) with a new 4K restoration from its original camera negative, an informative commentary by J-Horror expert David Kalat, marketing materials, retrospective documentaries on the making of the film and its legacy, and, naturally, Sadako’s tape as a standalone feature. All housed in a hard outer box with reversible cover inserts featuring newly commissioned artwork by Obviously Creative on one side, the original theatrical one-sheet designs on the other, and a perfect-bound 60-page booklet featuring new writings and essays on the trilogy. The boxed set has since been distributed by Arrow here in America as well.
BITS ‘N’ PIECES
Followed by: Shit, where to begin? Well, released on the very same day as "Ring" was a sequel and companion film called "Spiral", based on Suzuki’s own literary sequel, a unique and often puzzling continuation that relegates Sadako’s curse into something akin to a virus. It wasn’t a popular film, though it’s worth seeking out, and was “replaced,” in a manner of speaking, with "Ring 2" in 1999, a direct sequel that dismisses "Spiral" altogether.
Traum-A-Meter: 3 out of 4.
It’s not gory, it’s not violent, but the relentless feeling of dread, haunting imagery, and one hell of a finale make it an eerie film to try and shake off before bed.
Today’s Jam: Much like Sadako’s rage, Metallica’s penchant for vengeance continued in “The Unforgiven II,” which roared on stations during "Ring"’s initial curse in theaters.
THIS EPISODE’S MORAL:
Put the tape down. Walk away.
0 comments