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Director: Hideo Nakata
Screenplay: Hiroshi Takahashi
Cast: Nanako Matsushima (as Reiko
Asakawa); Hiroyuki Sanada (as Ryūji Takayama); Rikiya Ōtaka (as Yōichi
Asakawa); Miki Nakatani (as Mai Takano); Yūko Takeuchi as Tomoko Ōishi)
A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies) #49
Unequivocally, I cannot give an
unbiased opinion of Hideo Nakata's Ringu, a film I've lived with for years
and love. It's emphasised knowing this is not
the first ever adaptation of Kôji Suzuki's
original novel - that would be Ring:
Kanzenban (1995) (Reviewed on the blog HERE) which is said to be a more
faithful novel adaptation, made for TV, but is insane, has a strange aesthetic
that can only come from being made for nineties Japanese television, and is
softcore erotica at points which feels amazingly explicit. The theatrical
adaptation by Nakata strips the
premise off almost all the details found in Kanzenban, keeping only the initial idea where you watch a cursed
videotape, get a phone call immediately afterwards and die a week later from
the viewing. The cause of it, as divorced mother and journalist Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) views the tape as
part of research of its urban legend and the death of her niece from it, and
goes with her ex-husband Ryūji Takayama (Hiroyuki
Sanada) to stop the curse, does involve a figure named Sadako and ESP, but
the muted, down-to-earth nature of the story, how it's based on human emotions
generating a monster with a simplistic cause-and-effect, made this premise
universal.
Ringu works perfectly as an urban myth and could've easily become a
real one. Anyone could find a cursed videotape that would kill, a lack of
convoluted mythology to it allowing it to pass easily by word-of-mouth without
difficulty. Unlike many horror films, it keeps the back story simplistic, which
is more than likely why Ring's
popularity including its US remake in Japan and the West became possible, the
premise requiring little change even for the Creepy Pasta generation. (In fact
it's a lot more simpler and more scary than many creepy pasta legends, which
suffer from clichés of blood shot eyes and going over the top in their
narratives, more chilling in how those who view the tape end up dying of
apparent heart attacks with their faces contorted like Edvard Munch's more disturbing portraits). That the film is mainly
a mystery, a slow drip fed of information where minuscule details of horror
(distorted photographs, premonitions) are most of the scares, this proves to be
in its favour in terms of aging gracefully as it doesn't feel tied to any clichés
of its era, the innovator of modern J-horror to many in fact, and can still
stand out greatly.
The grey, naturalist atmosphere
of Ringu helps in its timelessness
and also in terms of its immense sense of mood, an atmosphere without need of
any fog covered hills or traditional sense of ghosts from classic Japanese
mythology, commendable on Nakata's
part for modernising the supernatural. Japanese films of the nineties into the
modern day always stand out for me in how distinct they look - possibly
different cameras from those in the West, the architecture and environments of
modern Japan - where suburbia and urban environments have a distinction from
similar locations in Western films, a sense of space in the exteriors and depth
to the interiors which always stands out for the likes of Ringu to Pulse (2001)
alongside a practical economy to them in how the environments look. In a film like
this they have the distinction of being more appropriately blank as slates,
allowing the dead to easily haunt them and paint character on the environments,
especially when contrasted against more older and natural environments such as
the coastal island the protagonists go to for their investigation of the tape.
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| From https://globalfilmbook.files.wordpress.com/2014/04/ringu3.jpg |
That the film involves a videotape
in its central premise doesn't date the film at all but makes it even more
frightening to me. An update of a magical talisman that is haunted - from a
whistle in an M.R. James short story
found on a beach to myths around objects like mirrors - videotape however is
actually one of the rare cases where, as it becomes more obsolete, it develops
far more ominous qualities suitable for horror like certain artefacts in
fairytales and mythology like black obsidian mirrors do. All film mediums, from
celluloid to a YouTube clip, have the
capacity to be haunted objects, filmmaking literally a form of channelling the
dead back to life, but specifically with how it can be manipulated, how fragile
the technology actually was and how its output of materials at one point in
society means so much is left to accidentally stumble upon, the possibility of
finding a videotape in a basement always likely and with an inherent mystery if
the tape blahas no clear signs of what it is, videotape is becoming more of a
mysterious entity where each failed moment tracking adds a sense of ghostly prescience.
Also, if Harmony Korine's Trash Humpers (2009) proved anything,
the curiosity laced with fear of what one could find if you found an unmarked
tape becomes more increasingly felt. That it's difficult to find the technology
to play videotapes on unless you go second hand adds to this, the sense of
datedness against (now) alien technology for younger people having a profound
effect on its form - that the cursed tape in Ringu is one in an unnamed white box found amongst a hotel's video
selection emphasises this, the mystery of ancient tomes or scrolls transferred
now to strange black tapes that punishes the curious who can actually play it. The video content itself in this version of
the story, monochrome nightmares with a bluish tint, is appropriately surreal
as well, the one aspect of Ringu
which gets overtly phantasmagoric and is also a major advantage for the story
in how distinct images from it, from a woman brushing her hair in the mirror or
a figure with a white cloth over their head, are constantly repeated and haunt
the protagonists further.
The only pervading issue in terms
of Ringu as a fan is knowing its
long line of sequels afterwards (and I'm including the US remake and its
ephemera in this too) and how it continued as a franchise it might've gotten. Franchises
sadly denote most of the time the danger of a convoluted back-story being forced
upon a great premise onwards, the lack of the haunting mood of the original,
and with the new crossover film with The
Grudge franchise called Sadako vs.
Kayako (2016) the fear of parody without any meat to the bones, but all of
those films are for another time. If anything this fear merely evokes how
potent Ringu is as a horror film, a
ghost story for the modern day which manages to tap into a primal fear of death
and the unknown perfectly for me.
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