Ring (film)

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Ring
The UK DVD cover for Ring, which recycles a camera shot from the climax of the film.
Directed by	Hideo Nakata
Produced by	Taka Ichise
Written by	Hiroshi Takahashi
Starring	Nanako Matsushima Hiroyuki Sanada Rikiya Otaka Yoichi Numata
Distributed by	Toho Company Ltd.
Release date(s)	January 31, 1998 (Japan)
Running time	96 min.
Language	Japanese
Budget	$1.2 million
Preceded by	Ring 0: Birthday
Followed by	Ring 2
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Ring (リング, Ringu^?) is a 1998 Japanese horror mystery film from director Hideo Nakata, adapted from a novel of the same name by Koji Suzuki. The film stars Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Rikiya Otaka as members of a divorced family, each cursed by a videotape. The film was later remade in Korea as The Ring Virus (1999), and in the United States as The Ring (2002).

Contents 1 Plot 2 Sequels and Adaptations 3 Differences from the novel 4 Cast and roles 5 Trivia 6 See also 7 External links

[edit] Plot

A news reporter, Asakawa Reiko, is doing a feature on the sudden inexplicable death of her niece and several of her friends who, as it is rumored, died exactly one week after watching a supposed cursed videotape (a plot device that was also central in Rune, a novel by Christopher Fowler).

Her investigation leads her to a vacation resort where she locates the unlabeled tape and, upon watching the film, which contains a surreal array of images including a woman brushing her hair, receives the curse herself.

Helped by her ex-husband Ryūji (Hiroyuki Sanada), Reiko unearths information about the cryptic film and learns that the woman in the tape is the long-dead psychic Shizuko. Reiko and Ryūji decipher that Shizuko's daughter, Sadako, who was killed three decades earlier, is the vengeful spirit behind the curse. With the week coming to a close, Reiko must break the supernatural curse to save her and her son's lives.

[edit] Sequels and Adaptations

There were two sequels shot in Japan: Rasen (also from 1998, aka Spiral) and Ring 2 (from 1999, and which was not based on Suzuki's works), as well as a prequel, Ring 0: Birthday (2000). Rasen made up for its predecessor in scientific detail, which was one of the reasons for its unpopularity. There was also a Korean remake (called Ring in Korea and The Ring Virus abroad) that was the first ever joint filmmaking venture between Korea and Japan. A video game, known as The Ring: Terror's Realm in the U.S., was also released in 2000 for the Dreamcast.

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, Ju-on^?) (2000),

Hideo Nakata's Dark Water (仄暗い水の底から, Honogurai mizu no soko kara^?) (Literally: The Depths of Dark Water), also based on a short story by Suzuki), and Higuchinsky's Uzumaki (2000, aka Vortex, based on the Junji Ito horror manga of the same name).

Most of the Ring stories also appeared as manga novels.

[edit] Differences from the novel

• The main character in the book is Asakawa Kazuyuki, a married man with his wife Shizuka and 1-year-old daughter Yōko, as opposed to Asakawa Reiko, a divorced woman with her ex. husband Takayama Ryūji and son Yōichi, in the movie.
• In the book, the main character is friends with Ryūji. In the movie, the main character, Reiko, is Ryūji's divorced wife.
• The images on the cursed video in the novel are much more indiscreet than the ones in the movie's cursed video.
• Sadako's mother Shizuko made the prediction of Mt. Mihara erupting in the movie, while it was Sadako who made that prediction in the novel.
• Sadako was not killed by her father in the novel, but she was in the movie.
• In the novel, Sadako is not shown coming out of a TV to kill those who have watched the tape (however they do have horrifying feelings before they die), unlike in the movie. This plot device was created by scriptwriter Hiroshi Takahashi for the franchise and is now generally recognized as the defining scene of the franchise.
• The novel has a subplot about Ryūji's history, while in the movie, Ryūji is only Asakawa's ex husband, with no suspicious actions in his history, but with some unrefined psychic powers of his own; Yōichi later displays similar talents in Ringu 2.
• In the novel, the cursed video begins and ends with written message, the ending one tells the viewer that he's going to die in one week from then. In the movie, the message was deleted by a group of teenagers after viewing it as a bad joke, so the future viewer of the tape doesn't know that he's going to die, unless he has been told so by other people.
• In the novel, there's no one on the phone, while the movie featured the cursed video's metallic screeching on the phone.
• In the novel, Asakawa's wife, Shizuka, takes their one year-old daughter Yōko to her grandparents, after having (not knowing that she risked her life) watched the cursed video along with the daughter. In the movie, Asakawa takes her son Yōichi to her grandparents, where she finds him watching the cursed video.
• In the novel, Shizuka and Yōko watched the cursed video while Asakawa wasn't at home - Asakawa only noticed that they watched it because the tape was not rewound anymore when he came home (it was rewound when he left home). In the movie, Yōichi starts watching the cursed video while Asakawa is sleeping, but, thanks to a dream in which she saw both her niece Oishi Tomoko (one of the first four victims of the cursed video) and The Towel-Headed Man, she wakes up in time to see Yōichi finishing watching it.
• In the novel, Asakawa and Ryūji go to Oshima on Asakawa's 6th day. In the movie, Asakawa and Ryūji go to Oshima on Asakawa's 4th day.
• In the novel, Asakawa and Ryūji don't have any visions - they learn about Shizuko's failed ESP demonstration by their investigation, and it's the man who murdered Sadako who confesses the murder to the two. In the movie, Asakawa and Ryūji discover both things by visions.
• A subplot ignored by all film adaptations except the Korean Ring Virus reveals that Sadako was not a woman at all, but a hermaphrodite, which eventually lead to her demise in the book.
• In the novel, in the well, Asakawa thinks of Sadako, and in the next moment, realizes that he's holding her skull. In the movie, Asakawa sees Sadako's skull raise, with full hair, in a ghostly sequence.
• In the novel, Asakawa and Ryūji search for the well's location for quite some time, as opposide to them finding it instantly in the movie.
• In the novel, the well was a circular stone well, just like in The Ring Virus (1999) and The Ring (2002), while in the movie, it was a circular concrete well.
• In the novel, Asakawa and Ryūji ask two more people about Sadako: Shizuko's old friend Genji, and Sadako's Hisho Acting Troupe colleague Shin Arima.
• In the novel, it's Sadako the first Yamamura that Asakawa and Ryūji find out, and they find out about her in Miura Tetsuzu's - Ryūji's old, by the Ring novel already defunct, elderly friend, who archived all data about Japan's people with ESP powers - archive. In the movie, it's Shizuko the first Yamamura that Asakawa and Ryūji find out, and it's Ryūji who finds it out, from Asakawa's newspaper's Oshima correspondent, Hayatsu.
• In the novel, neither Shizuko nor Sadako ever appear in the cursed video, but Sadako's defunct brother, who died four months after birth (Sadako was seven at that time) does appear.
• In the novel, Tomoko was at home alone when she died and her body was found lying on the kitchen floor. In the movie, Tomoko was at home with her best friend Masami when she died, her body was found in her closet, and Masami became afraid of the TV's.
• The novel also depicted the death of Tomoko's boyfriend, Shuichi Iwata, another of the first four victims of the cursed video. The movie didn't depict it.
• In the novel, Asakawa's investigation of the cursed video starts one month after the four deaths, when he learns about Iwata's death from the driver of the taxi he takes home. In the movie, Asakawa's investigation of the cursed video starts shortly after the four deaths, and the video was among her interests even before, as it was an urban legend in the movie.
• In the novel, it's Sadako's grandmother who speaks in the Oshima dialect in the cursed video, and her speech is clearly audible. In the movie, it's the Towel-Headed Man who does that, and his speech is slow-masked.
• In the novel, Ryūji calls Takano Mai before he dies, and she eventually hears his last scream. In the movie, Asakawa calls Ryūji before he dies, and she eventually hears the metallic screeching from the cursed video.
• In the novel, there's Takano Mai in Ryūji's apartment when Asakawa comes there after Ryūji's death, and no police. In the movie, there is police, and Takano Mai is outside Ryūji's apartment, in a very shocked state.
• In the novel, Asakawa finds about the four teenagers having stayed in the South Hakone resort by finding Nonoyama (a friend of Iwata's) membership card, which he finds in Tomoko's room. In the movie, Asakawa finds that out by talking to some friends of Tomoko's, and also by retrieving some photos for which the receipt she finds in Tomoko's room.

[edit] Cast and roles

• Nanako Matsushima - Reiko Asakawa
• Miki Nakatani - Mai Takano
• Hiroyuki Sanada - Ryūji Takayama
• Yūko Takeuchi - Tomoko Oishi
• Hitomi Sato - Masami Kurahashi
• Yoichi Numata - Takashi Yamamura
• Yutaka Matsushige - Yoshino
• Katsumi Muramatsu - Kōichi Asakawa
• Rikiya Otaka - Yōichi Asakawa
• Masako - Shizuko Yamamura
• Daisuke Ban - Dr. Heihachirō Ikuma
• Kiyoshi Risho - Omiya the cameraman
• Yūrei Yanagi - Okazaki
• Yōko Ōshima - Reiko's Aunt
• Kiriko Shimizu - Ryomi Oishi
• Rie Inou - Sadako Yamamura
• Hiroyuki Watanabe - Hayatsu
• Miwako Kaji - Kazue Yamamura
• Yoko Kima - Junior High schoolgirl
• Asami Nagata - Junior High schoolgirl
• Keiko Yoshida - Senior High schoolgirl
• Yoshiko Matsumaru - Senior High schoolgirl
• Yoho Naose - Senior High schoolgirl
• Maki Ikeda - Yoko Tsuji
• Takashi Takayama - Takehiko Nomi
• Toshiliko Takeda - Yamamura as a teenager
• Chihiro Shirai - Sadako as a young girl
• Mantarō Koichi - Town Hall moderator
• Shinkichi Noda - Press representative
• Kazufumi Nakai - Press representative

[edit] Trivia

• The trailers released by Dreamworks for the American release of the film in 2003 incorrectly pronounce the film's title as "RING-yoo".

• Is the highest grossing horror film in Japan with 15.9 billion yen ($137.7 million)

• At one point in the Playstation 2 video game, ".hack//GU: Rebirth", a character mentions "a haunted video-tape", a reference to the Ringu franchise.

[edit] See also

• J-Horror
• Onryō
• Yotsuya Kaidan
• Sadako Yamamura

[edit] External links

• the ringworld - a fansite covering all aspects of the Ring series and movies.
• the Ring AREA - Contains of the cursed videos of the Ring cycle and their scene-by-scene analyses, as well as lots of other useful information.
• Ringu at the Internet Movie Database
• Snowblood Apple's Ring Cycle article - an overview of all Ring films.
• Snuff Video - Japanese heart-stopping terror with the Ring series.