Film Review: Ringu

"This Kind Of Thing... It Doesn't Start By One Person Telling A Story. It's More Like Everyone's Fear Just Takes On A Life Of Its Own..."

Before the mighty highbrows of Hollywood decided to make a quick and easy buck by exploiting the majestic minds of foreign filmmakers with trashy English-speaking reincarnations of particular works, there was a time in which both the Japanese and South Korean horror genres produced some of the most impressive examples of the genre including Dark Water, A Tale of Two Sisters and perhaps most famously, Ringu, the Hideo Nakata directed adaptation of Koji Suzuki 1991 novel of the same name. Brought back to the big screen this week for a special 4K restoration, Nakata's iconic 1998 horror thriller remains to this day a work of chilling paranoia, one which on repeat viewings continues to bewilder and terrify, and a movie which thanks to a superbly crafted digital fix up, looks absolutely brilliant back up on the biggest of cinematic screens. Whilst many will be already aware of the basic set up thanks to the Gore Verbinksi 2002 American remake, Ringu follows Nanako Matsushima's Reiko Asakawa, a small-time journalist who investigates the sudden death of her niece and leads her onto a path regarding a local mystery surrounding a cursed videotape which when watched, gives the watcher seven days to live. 

With it being twenty one years since the film's initial release, in some roundabout way, it is easy to have much more of a fun time admiring the creepy elements at the heart of Nakata's most impressive horror piece after multiple viewings on the small screen, and whilst big screen re-issues always fail to evoke the same sort of impact you gather from the first time a particular piece is lived through, the cinema environment always allows complete investment as you squirm your way through particular iconic set pieces which although you know are coming, are still damn effecting and unbelievably creepy. Whilst Nakata's movie could easily be seen as eighty minutes of backstory as it insidiously sneaks its' way up to a final act in which one of horror's most iconic images is born, the almost complete absence of background music and humour results in an excruciatingly oppressive atmosphere as we follow Reiko through her discovery of the famous video tape and the supernatural terror of Rie Inō's Sadako Yamamura, the Japanese equivalent of Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees, just slightly more terrifying and definitely in need of a good old haircut. Whether you appreciate the tenderness of the execution from the Japanese original or the more Westernised, mainstream approach of Verbinski's take, a remake of which is actually rather well done, Ringu remains one of the most interesting and original horror movies of recent times, one which forces you to check your TV twice before switching off the lights and one which supplies you with a fundamental fear of any female with a white dress and long dark hair. 

Overall Score: 9/10