Ring (1998) [DVD] [2000]

A major box office hit in the Far East, Hideo Nakada's Ring is a subtly creepy Japanese ghost story with an urban legend theme, based on a series of popular teen-appeal novels by Susuki Koji. Far less showy than even the restrained chills of The Blair Witch Project or The Sixth Sense, Ring has nevertheless become a mainstream blockbuster and has already been followed by Ring 2 and the prequel Ring 0. A Hollywood remake is in the works.

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

DVD Special Features: UK Exclusive Trailer
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

Within a week of watching a mysterious videotape, a group of teenagers are dead. The bodies are found gruesomly contorted, their eyes frozen as if they had seen something more terrifying than any physical threat. The video becomes an urban myth. Insidiously, an unseen force is pointing its deadly finger at those poor souls unable to resist their curiosity. One of those people is the cynical journalist Reiko, who soon finds herself unwillingly drawn into a spiralling nightmare of fearfrom an unseen, omnipresent threat. The most unsettling film since the Exorcist, with an unnatural presence that touches every nerve in your body, Ring is a beast of an entirely different order. Critically acclaimed as one of the most frightening horror films in years, Ring delivers a tense spine-chilling atmosphere, filled with an overwhelming sense of dread and a potent presence of unworldly evil. Dark, sinister and genuinely horrifying, this is a film you will never forget.]