Ringu (1998)

...and is less confusing. However, Ringu is still a great film - just not as scary as expected, and is very confusing. It is worth a watch, although don't be surprised if your nerves are ripped to shreds and you suddenly become very suspicious of unmarked videos and girls with long, black hair! Obviously, Ringu is made in Japanese, but that's what the subtitles are there for, and you shouldn't have any problem understanding the plot. Don't let the ...
...Ring and enjoyed it, watch Ringu if you can, as they are very different films. A few quick facts for you - this was made with £1 million, which is quite something! To put that into perspective, Kill Bill supposedly ran £20 million over budget! Also, the video's contents are actually Sadako's thoughts - and the man with the white cover over his head is a vision of Takayama. (The title comes from a trailer I saw for Scary Movie 3! It was all I could ...

JessL 05.11.2003 (23.02.2004) · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

...few other Ring movies – Ringu 2 (apparently crap), Ringu 0 – a prequel (again – not so good, they say), Rasen – a sub-sequel that was made at the same time as Ringu – and scoffed on by Ringu purists. Finally there’s Ring Virus – a virtual remake from Korea. Phew! Most hardcore Ringu fans dislike this version, though it does include more elements from the novel (part one of a trilogy itself) than Ringu does. ...
...but there still isn;t one. This may be the USA remake’s only saving grace - if it stinks, at least the novels may well fare better! If you’re after a surreal thriller, this is probably going to be right up your alley. The fine little touches of scaryness build to a crawl-into-the-corner-and-hide climax, the imagery is rich (important in a subtitled movie!) and the score minimal and non-intrusive. If you hold no truck with “oh yeah, ...

peppersinclaire 09.05.2002 (10.05.2002) · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

It’s a familiar story, I’m sure we all know it well now. Someone makes a really good, if low budget, movie. The film probably never does particularly well, but everyone who does watch it thinks its great. Then along comes Hollywood, and before you know it, it’s a really crap re-make, which makes a whole load of money, but has little or no integrity. Know what I’m talking about? *cough* The Haunting, Psycho etc *cough* Well, the plus side of this ...
...destroyed it, only just mind you, as ‘The Ring’ is due out sometime soon. The Original film ‘Ringu’ (made in 1998), a low budget Japanese film by Hideo Nakata is a brilliant film, and I’m so glad I got to see it before the re-make was thrust upon me. So, after such a long intro, what is this all about? Well, as I mention above, this film is Japanese, and as such I should point out that it is subtitled, and badly at that, sometimes the background ...

claires_cult 20.01.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

Horror films seem to be getting worse these days. Ok, so it’s a sweeping statement but the world of horror in director and screenwriter’s eyes these days seems to be made up of quick jumps and lots of blood. This, in my humble opinion, is what’s known as a ‘bad move’. I was reminded about this the other day when I had a chance to catch the showing of Ring and Ring 2 on Channel 4 over the last week. The first of these ...
...films of all time and its utter lack of reliance on blood and ‘jump’ scenes is a fresh and welcome experience. Ring is a Japanese film by director Nakata Hideo and written by Takahashi Hiroshi. It is actually based on a famous book by Suzuki Koji, still unavailable in an English language translated version (this is apparently in progress though). It concerns an unmarked videotape which when watched can cause the viewer to die exactly ...

pbyron 17.05.2002 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

It has been a while since I watched a horror movie which actually managed to freak me out. Western horror movies seemed to go through a stage of either being ultra gory(before being clamped down on), then slipping into self-parody and have now spun full circle back to the old, tired slasher movie genre which has even made someone believe the 9th sequel to Friday the 13th was a great idea(it wasn't - arrgh!). Hollywood seems almost completely devoid ...
...content with picking over the bones of past successes and parodying its own inadequacies, going for the cheap shock tactic as opposed to truly unnerving the audience and leaving behind that lingering sense of foreboding and "what if..." long after the credits roll. It is little surprise then that the best horror movie(or more appropriately: ghost story) for ages doesn't come from Hollywood, or even the West, but instead from the Japanese. I'm sure ...

wampyrii 17.05.2002 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

...toes,alert and guessing.Unlike THE RING, Ringu avoids cheap scares.No chasing,no bathtub electrocutions, no gore, no physical battles and no mad suicidal horses in this version. While the remake was big on swish camera action, strange noises, and scary psychiatric assemssment videos, Ringu is much more simple, streamlined and uncluttered.The tape in the original is shorter than in the remake, with much less yuck in it. No fingers pierced on nails, ...
...more believeable. But RINGU is not without it's flaws. Not so much the movie itself, but in the subtitling. White subtitles on top of Matsushima white clad bosom? It may be a nice bosom indeed, but for five minutes I had no idea what she was saying! RINGU is a far superior horror/psychological thriller than the ring, for all the reasons above. The casting shines, the acting is believable, and the tension is palpable.Definately well worth the watch. ...

Thehonesttruth 14.11.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

...who don't know the story, Ringu is set around a kind of urban myth-a cursed videotape-which causes the viewer to die seven days after watching it (no Batman & Robin jokes,please!). Of course, it is not just a myth, as we find out within the first five,excruciatingly tense minutes, as two girls sit alone in a house talking about the tape. One of them, as it turns out,watched the tape the previous week,and the girls get edgy when the phone rings ...
...Of course,the phone is a red herring,leading to the girl's friend going off to the loo & leaving her alone,for the gruesome hack & slash death to...oh wait-this isn't a typical mtv generation horror movie after all-there is no hack & slash-instead we get the girls look of pure terror & one of the coolest 'leave it to your imagination' moments in a film for years! At this point I was glued to my seat,or at least the end of it, as the girl's Aunt ...

wheeljack77 07.04.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

It was inevitable that I would watch this original version of ‘The Ring’ (reviewed last week), if only to compare and contrast the two different treatments of the same story. I was surprised by the big differences in story line, as I expected the American version to be a frame-by-frame remake, when it actually changes a lot of the story by a fair bit. I’m going to try and review the film as a stand alone, and then try and compare the two afterwards, ...
...This is unfortunately necessary, as there was a lot of the Japanese film that I would not have been able to follow without the previous knowledge afforded to me by the remake. ***Plot*** Reiko Asakawa, a young newspaper reporter, is writing a story about a videotape that is rumoured to cause the death of anyone who watches it within seven days. Meanwhile, her young niece dies in suspicious circumstances, and at the funeral, Reiko talks to some ...

pesky33 04.06.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

Do you like scary movies? No, really. After the self knowing, irony by numbers of Scream I truly thought that horror as a genre had had its day and I'd never be scared by a film ever again. The dull art school posturing of Blair Witch Project only served to re-enforce that belief. So whats gone wrong? Well, we're all so knowing these days, safe in our 21st century homes - we just don't scare that easy. Monsters, zombies, vampires, even serial killers ...
...fit readilly into our world, we can't feel the threat. This is where Ring steps in. Made a year before Blair Witch with an equally miniscule budget, Ring is a contender for the scariest movie ever made. The premise is simple and very modern: A new rumour is doing the rounds in the school yards of Japan - that a group of teenagers had watched a disturbing video of indecipherable images and that exactly a week later they all died a horrifying (yet ...

djchopper 10.09.2002 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

Sometimes there is a lot to be said about those rare films that not only can rattle a person, but even do it while being made in another country. This very proper distinction is for the film "Ringu", made by Hideo Nakata, and also is one of the most bone rattling films I have ever seen. The way it starts is as this. At its beginning,there are 2 girls who are chatting, enjoying each others company, until one of them tells her friend about seeing ...
...a joke on a friend of hers, who for some strange reason is not happy while she is clowning around. Then when her friend goes to the bathroom,she gets distracted, turns around and looks while something terrible happens. After this,her aunt(Tomoko)not only beings a careful and intense investigation of what happened, but also makes some unsettling discoveries about it. While discovering that some friends of hers also passed on. And yet. What is ...

mtrekster 17.11.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

Well, If you know me and have read my opinions, then you know I am not squeamish when it comes to horror films but this one gave me the shivers. This is probably the first film since the exorcist that actually scared me deep down, call me a wimp but it really did. After seeing the 2003 version on a plane about 6 times all the way through, no kidding, I was on a journey to Australia so I had a lot of time to kill. I loved the film and it did shock ...
...other people around me reasured me that I wasn't going to die after watching it. Both films are based around the same storyline. The original made by 'Tartan Asia Extreme' is japanese and is subtitled into english. The basis of the story is that there is a video tape and within a week of watching this tape, you mysteriously die. And just before you die you get a phone call. It has been critically acclaimed as one of the most frightening horror films ...

Derek300 09.05.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

Ring is a supernatural Japanese horror film that has only recently arrived in England, despite being made nearly three years ago. Its success in Japan was such that it has already spawned two sequels. The story centres around an schoolkids Urband Myth about a weird video tape. Anyone who sees it dies exactly one week later. After a group of young friends die after allegedly seeing just such a video, a young female reporter and her ex-husband try ...
...the tape, but make the terrible mistake of watching it.....!!! The idea behind the film owes a lot to David Cronenberg's Videodrome, but this is a very different film, closer to the weird French classic 'Eyes Without a Face'. Like that film, for much of the time Ring is slow paced, mundanely directed and verging on the uninspired. But then, just when you're about to nod off, the film hits you with an image so spooky, so weird, and so original it ...

fingertoe 09.09.2000 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

Contrary to what the title suggests, The Ring (or Ringu, from the Japanese) does not focus on a ring, but on a videotape. It begins with a rumour that there is an evil videotape that kills you seven days after you watch it. A reporter watches it and, with her ex-husband, sets out to work out how and why it kills people, before she too dies. The film is beautfilly simple in it's premise and the plot remains coherant and intriguing, by the use of ...
...the onyl characters we hear speak are Reiko (the reporter), her son Yoichi and her ex-husband Ryuji. Throughout the film, the characters rewatch the video many times and each time, we are allowed to see more. These are the most chilling parts of the film, as the video is filled with people crawling around as if perhaps in hell, a man who simply stands with a towel over his head while pointing, and other such images. These viewings get longer each ...

GreenFluffBob 06.07.2004 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

It's long been apparent that American cinema is suffocating in its own stagnation and lack of new ideas... so, to Japan we must turn. Originally released in 1998, Ring has long had cult status as the scariest film ever, even more so now the Americans have filmed their tribute to it (for that is all it is... a pale mockery of this film). Yes, it is in Japanese, and if you're a relaxed moviewatcher who likes to relax to films, this probably isn' worth ...
...through, although I personally don't really see this as a down point, and you do have to pay attention to the film to get it. The payoff, however, is incredible... There is no overt horror here. No trying to make you jump. There is, however, an all-pervasive sense of terror, of time ticking down for Reiko, of Sadako coming to get you... when you finally see Sadako come out of the well at the end, its horrifying in the same way as a car crash - you ...

sonofsanta 26.11.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)

The story was originally from a popular Japanese novel, which subsequently released as a horror comic, then finally as a film. The story is about the lead actress Reiko (a reporter) inverstigating a rumoured tape which lead to deaths for its viewer. Those who viewed it will receive a phone call (hence the title RING) telling them they will die within 7 days. Reiko and her husband got hold of a copy, watched it, and the phone predictablly rang. Reiko's ...
...in a race against time to save themself. They started on the most obvious point in trying to discover the meaning of the tape. It looks like a bad editing gone wrong, and the tape seemed to embedded a ghost within. On the way they discovered the sad story of a psychic girl who lived long ago, and was murdered. They also discovered many intersting points surrounding this anicent mystery. All these plot is tightly knited and enable this film to easily ...

st_mak 18.08.2003 · Read full review
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Review of Ringu (1998)