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Ring (film)

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This article is about the 1998 Japanese horror film. For other uses, see Ring (disambiguation).
"Towel-Headed Man" redirects here. Not to be confused with Towelhead.
Ring
Japanese film poster
Directed byHideo Nakata
Written byHiroshi Takahashi
Kôji Suzuki
Produced byTaka Ichise
StarringNanako Matsushima
Hiroyuki Sanada
Rikiya Ōtaka
Yoichi Numata
CinematographyJun'ichirō Hayashi
Edited byNobuyuki Takahashi
Music byKenji Kawai
Distributed byToho
Release date
  • January 31, 1998 (1998-01-31)
Running time
95 minutes
CountryJapan
LanguageJapanese
Budget$1,200,000
Box office¥1,000,000,000 ($13,005,000)[1]

Ring (リング, Ringu) is a 1998 Japanese horror film by Hideo Nakata, adapted from the novel Ring by Kôji Suzuki, which in turn draws on the Japanese folk tale Banchō Sarayashiki. The film stars Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Rikiya Ōtaka . The film follows TV-reporter and single mother Reiko who is caught up in a series of deaths surrounding a cursed video tape.

Production took approximately 9 months.[2] Ring and its sequel Rasen were released in Japan at the same time.

After release, Ring inspired numerous films within the "Ring-universe" and triggered a trend of Western remakes.

Plot

Two teenagers, Masami (Hitomi Satō) and Tomoko (Yūko Takeuchi), talk about a videotape recorded by a boy in Izu which is fabled to bear a curse that kills the viewer seven days after watching. Tomoko reveals that a week ago, she and three of her friends watched a weird tape and received a call after watching. Tomoko is killed by an unseen force with Masami having the horror of watching.

Days later, Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima), a reporter investigating the popularity of the video curse, discovers that her niece Tomoko, and her three other friends, mysteriously died at the same time, on the same night, with their faces twisted in fear. She also discovers that Masami became insane and is in a mental hospital. After stumbling upon Tomoko's photos from the past week, Reiko finds that the four teenagers stayed in a rental cabin in Izu.

Reiko goes to Izu and arrives at the rented cabin, where she finds an unlabeled tape in the reception room of the teenager's rental cottage. Watching the tape, Reiko sees a series of seemingly unrelated disturbing images. As soon as the tape is over, Reiko sees a mysterious reflection in the television and receives a phone call, with an unknown voice telling her "seven days". Disturbed, she leaves the cabin.

Reiko enlists the help of her ex-husband, Ryūji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada). They take a picture of Reiko and find her face blurred in the photograph. Ryūji then watches the tape, against Reiko's objections. A day later, Reiko creates a copy for Ryūji for them to study. They find a hidden message embedded within the tape saying "frolic in brine, goblins be thine". The message is in a form of dialect from Izu Ōshima Island. That night, Reiko catches her young son Yoichi watching the videotape; claiming that Tomoko had told him to do it. Reiko and Ryūji sail for Ōshima and discover the history of the great psychic Shizuko Yamamura, who was accused of faking supernatural powers; and thus committed suicide.

With only a day left, Reiko and Ryūji discover that the videotape was made psionically by Shizuko's lost daughter, Sadako Yamamura, whose supernatural powers surpassed even those of her mother. The two go back to Izu with the assumption that Sadako is dead and her vengeful spirit (Onryō) killed the teenagers. They uncover a well underneath the cabin and through a vision see the circumstances of Sadako's murder by her father. They try to find Sadako's body in an attempt to appease her spirit. Minutes before her seven days are up, Reiko finds Sadako's corpse, and they believe that the curse is broken.

The next day Ryūji is at home and his TV switches on by itself, showing the image of a well. The ghost of Sadako crawls out of the well, out of Ryūji's TV set, and frightens him into a state of shock, killing him via cardiac arrest. Before dying, he manages to dial Reiko's number; she hears his last minutes over the phone and realizes the videotape's curse remains unbroken. Desperate to save her son, Reiko realizes that copying the tape and showing it to someone else saved her. With a VCR and Ryūji's copy of the tape, Reiko travels with her son to see her father in an attempt to save him, realizing that this is a never-ending cycle: The tape must always be copied and passed on to ensure the survival of the viewers.

Themes

Critics have discussed Ring’s preoccupations with Japanese tradition’s collision with modernity. Colette Balmain identifies, “In the figure of Sadako, Ring [utilises the] vengeful yūrei archetype of conventional Japanese horror”. She argues how this traditional Japanese figure is expressed via a videotape which “embodies contemporary anxieties, in that it is technology through which the repressed past reasserts itself”.[3]

Ruth Goldberg argues that Ring expresses "ambivalence about motherhood”. She reads Reiko as a mother who – due to the new potential for women’s independence – neglects her 'natural' role as martyred homemaker in pursuit of an independent identity, subsequently neglecting her child. Goldberg identifies a doubling effect whereby the unconscious conflicts of Reiko’s family are expressed via the supernatural in the other family under Reiko’s investigation.[4]

Jay McRoy reads the ending hopefully: if the characters therapeutically understand their conflicts, they can live on.[5] Balmain however, is not optimistic. She identifies that survival relies on reassertion of patriarchy and reads the replication of the video as technology spreading, virus-like throughout Japan.[3]

Cast

  • Nanako Matsushima as Reiko Asakawa, a journalist who investigates her niece's death and finds the cursed videotape.
  • Hiroyuki Sanada as Ryūji Takayama, Reiko's ex-husband, a former medical student turned university professor. He has a degree of sixth sense that detects supernatural auras.
  • Rikiya Ōtaka as Yōichi Asakawa, Reiko's young son who also has a sixth sense like his father.
  • Miki Nakatani as Mai Takano, Ryuji's student.
  • Yūko Takeuchi as Tomoko Ōishi, Reiko's niece who watches the cursed videotape and is amongst its first victims.
  • Hitomi Satō as Masami Kurahashi, Tomoko's best friend.
  • Rie Inō as Sadako Yamamura, the antagonist of the film. A woman with psychic powers who was thrown down a well where she died, but her spirit lived on within a videotape.
  • Masako as Shizuko Yamamura, Sadako's mother. She too had psychic powers but a disastrous press demonstration led to her suicide.
  • Yōichi Numata as Takashi Yamamura, Sadako's uncle who runs an inn on Oshima Island.
  • Yutaka Matsushige as Yoshino, a journalist associate of Reiko.
  • Katsumi Muramatsu as Kōichi Asakawa, Reiko's father.

Production

After the moderate success of the Ring novel, written by Kōji Suzuki and published in 1991, publisher Kadokawa Shoten decided to make a motion picture adaptation of Ring.

Screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi and director Hideo Nakata collaborated to work on the script after reading Suzuki's novel and watching Ringu: Jiko ka! Henshi ka! 4-tsu no inochi wo ubau shôjo no onnen (Ring: Accident?! Or Unnatural Death?! The Young Girl Whose Hatred Steals Four Lives), Fuji Television Network's 1995 made-for-TV film, directed by Chisui Takigawa.[6] However, the TV version was re-edited and released on VHS under a new title, Ringu: Kanzenban (Ring: The Complete Edition).[6] Nakata did not state which TV version he and Takahashi watched.

In their film script, Takashi and Nakata changed the protagonist's gender (from male to female), name (from Kazuyuki Asakawa to Reiko Asakawa), marital status (from married to divorced) and child's gender and name (from daughter Yoko to son Yoichi).[6]

With the budget of 1.2 million USD, the entire production took nine months and one week. According to director Nakata, the script and pre-production process took three or four months, shooting five weeks and post-production four months.[2]

The special effects on the cursed videotape and some parts in the film were shot on a 35 mm film which was passed on in a laboratory in which a computer added a 'grainy' effect.[2] Extended visual effects were used in the part in which the ghost of Sadako Yamamura climbs out of the television. First, they shot the Kabuki Theater actress Rie Ino'o walking backwards in a jerky, exaggerated motion. They then played the film in reverse to portray an unnatural-looking walk for Sadako.[7]

Sadako's eye, which appears in close-up towards the end of the film and on Tartan's UK DVD cover,[8] was that of a male crew member rather than Ino'o herself.[7]

Reception

Upon release in Japan, Ring became the highest grossing horror film in the country.[9]

Ring has received universal critical acclaim; Rotten Tomatoes lists it with a "fresh" rating of 97%, with 33 of 34 reviews positive.[10]

Sight & Sound critic Mark Kermode praised the film's "timeless terror," with its "combination of old folk devils and contemporary moral panics" which appeal to both teen and adult audiences alike.[9] While Adam Smith of Empire Online finds the film "throttled by its over complexity, duff plotting and a distinct lack of actual action," [11] Kermode emphasizes that "one is inclined to conclude that it is the telling, rather than the content of the tale, that is all-important." [9] Variety agrees that the slow pace, with "its gradual evocation of evil lying await beneath the surface of normality," is one of the film's biggest strengths.[12]

Ring was ranked #69 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010.[13] In the early 2010s, Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films.[14] The Ring placed at number 61 on their top 100 list.[15]

Influence on Western Cinema

Ring had some influence on Western Cinema and gained cult status in the West.[16]

Prior to Ring's release in the West, Hollywood horror relied on on-screen violence, shock tactics and gore.[16] Ring revitalised an otherwise stagnant genre by taking a more restrained approach to horror, leaving much of the terror to the audience's imagination.[16] The film initiated global interest in Japanese cinema and appealed to those who preferred a subtler approach than the Hollywood tradition. This "New Asian Horror"[3] resulted in further successful releases, such as Ju-on: The Grudge and Dark Water.[5]

All three of these films were remade in the USA. The Ring reached number 1 at the box office and grossed more in Japan than the original.[3]

Sequels and remakes

Japanese Prequels and Sequels

Hideo Nakata Ring Timeline Rasen Timeline
Ring 0: Birthday (2000)
Ring (1998)
Ring 2 (1999) Rasen (aka Spiral, 1998)
Sadako 3D (2012)
Sadako 3D 2 (2013)

International Remakes and Adaptations

The first American remake follows the original closely although plot elements are altered or added in and Sadako Yamamura is reformed into Samara Morgan.

The international success of the Japanese films launched a revival of horror filmmaking in Japan that resulted in such pictures as Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 film Pulse (known as Circuit (回路, Kairo) in Japan), Takashi Shimizu's The Grudge (呪怨, Juon) (2000), Hideo Nakata's Dark Water (仄暗い水の底から, Honogurai mizu no soko kara, literally From the Depths of Dark Water), also based on a short story by Suzuki), and Higuchinsky's Uzumaki (2000, aka Vortex, based on the Junji Itō horror manga of the same name).[citation needed]

See also

References

  1. ^ [1]. Eiren. Retrieved 2012-09-1.
  2. ^ a b c The "Ring" Master: Interview With Hideo Nakata
  3. ^ a b c d Belmain, Colette (2008), Introduction to Japanese Horror film (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press).
  4. ^ Goldberg, Ruth (2004), 'Demons in the Family', in Planks of Reason, ed. Barry Keith Grant and Christopher Sharrett, (Scarecrow Press), pp. 370-385.
  5. ^ a b McRoy, Jay (2007), Nightmare Japan: Contemporary Japanese Cinema (Rodopi).
  6. ^ a b c Meikle, Dennis (2005), The Ring Companion (London: Titan Books).
  7. ^ a b Ringu (1998) - Trivia
  8. ^ "Ring UK DVD"
  9. ^ a b c Kermode, Mark (2011), 'Review of Ring', BFI | Sight and Sound.
  10. ^ Ring Movie Reviews, Pictures - Rotten Tomatoes
  11. ^ Smith, Adam (n.d.), 'Review of Ring', Empire Online.
  12. ^ Variety Staff (1999), 'Review: The Ring', Variety Magazine.
  13. ^ 'The 100 Best Films of World Cinema - 69. Ringu', Empire Magazine.
  14. ^ "The 100 best horror films". Time Out. Retrieved April 13, 2014.
  15. ^ NF. "The 100 best horror films: the list". Time Out. Retrieved April 13, 2014.
  16. ^ a b c Martin, Daniel (2009), 'Japan’s Blair Witch: Restraint, Maturity, and Generic Canons in the British Critical Reception of Ring', Cinema Journal 48, Number 3, Spring: 35-51.
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