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Amazon.co.uk Review
Investigating the inexplicable, near-simultaneous deaths of her young niece and three teenage friends, reporter Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) learns of a story about a supernaturally cursed video-tape circulating among school kids. As soon as anyone has watched the tape, allegedly recorded by mistake from a dead TV channel, the telephone rings and the viewer has exactly a week to live. Those doomed are invisibly marked, but their images are distorted if photographed. Inevitably, Asakawa gets hold of the tape and watches it. The enigmatic collage of images include a coy woman combing her hair in a mirror, an old newspaper headline about a volcanic eruption, a hooded figure ranting, people crawling and a rural well. When the phone rings (a memorably exaggerated effect), Asakawa is convinced that the curse is active and calls in her scientist ex-husband Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada) to help. He watches a copy of the video a day after Asakawa is exposed and willingly submits himself to the curse. Even more urgency is added to their quest when their young son is unwittingly duped, apparently by the mystery woman from the tape, into watching the video too, joining the queue for a supernatural death.
On the DVD: For a film made in the digital era, the letterboxed (16:9) print is in mediocre state, with a noticeable amount of scratching, though the Dolby Digital soundtrack is superb, making this a film that's as scary to listen to as it is to watch (the squeamish might find themselves covering their ears rather than their eyes in some scenes). Otherwise, there are trailers for the first two Ring films and Audition, 10 stills, filmographies for the principals, a review by Mark Kermode, blurb-like extracts from other reviews and the ominous option of playing Sadako's video after a solemn disavowal of responsibility from the distributors! --Kim Newman
Video Description
Mark Kermode Film Review
Interactive Menus
Stills Gallery
Star and Director Filmographies
Ring 2 Trailer
Language: Japanese Dolby Digital
Subtitles: English
Video Aspect Ratio: Anamorphic Widescreen
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Customer Reviews
Like all the best ghost story tellers, Nakata spends almost the whole time hinting that he's going to scare the pants off you -- any minute now. There are numerous passages of uncanny creepiness, tension and anxiety, yet only one sequence of all-out terror. But that's all he needs; by the time it comes you're so unsettled that the pay-off is truly devastating. Best of all, Nakata goes for the standard 'just-when-you-think it's over' ploy, but in this case it's crucial to the plot rather than arbitrarily tagged on.
I watched the movie several days ago and it's still bothering me. I'm just glad I didn't watch it alone. M R James would have loved 'Ring', and there's no higher praise than that.
The story is straightforward: a group of teenagers have died under strange circumstances, seemingly scared to death. A rumour is going around that the deaths have something to do with a cursed videotape: you watch it, then, a week later, you die.
A journalist finds the video and watches it. Determined to get to the root cause, and beginning to believe in the curse, she and her ex-husband find themselves in a race against time to solve the mystery.
For most of the film, you feel that Ring is creepy rather than scary, a well-acted, well-directed mystery story rather than a full-on horror movie. There are no expensive special effects, and the film prefers to hint at its horrors rather than put them on full view.
The finale, though, is something else. Simple, effective, and devastatingly scary; the director know to let the suspense build, and let your imagination do the hard work. It was still scaring me a week after watching it...
If gore's your bag, skip this, because it has none. Rather, it follows the story of a young journalist who, after the death of a young woman who watched a suspect video tape, begins to investigate the tape's origins. What she discovers is both unnerving and creepy.
This film's strong point is it's visual imagery, most notably in the tape itself, which is both weird and unpleasant. The plot ticks over nicely, providing just enough suspense to keep the viewer's interest piqued. The script is also strong, and it is very telling that this is the highest grossing Japanese horror film ever. It has also found global success, adding a much-deserved boom to the Japanese horror film industry, along with the equally sinister 'Grudge' and 'Audition', plus many other far more violent flicks.
This film is superbly directed, and the acting is also of a very high calibre, convincing and strong. The plot itself is very original, if a little far-fetched, but then, this is the horror genre, so it shouldn't make perfect sense anyway!
Please don't confuse this with the vastly inferior American remake, which massacres the original script and deviates wildly from the plot. Subtle Japanese film-making should not be tampered with by money-grabbing Western film-makers who have absolutely no artistic integrity whatsoever.
To conclude, this is an imaginative, frequently gripping and well directed horror, with an intelligent, thoughtful streak running right through it. It is well worth a few hours of your time!
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