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Ring (Ringu)

Threat advisory: Severe - Severe risk of entertaining activities

Movie propaganda

Journalist Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) enlists the help of her embittered ex-husband Ryuji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada) to investigate rumours about students who have watched a mysterious video, then received a phone call saying that they would die in one week's time. seven days later, to the minute, they dropped dead. the video's strange abstract images, it transpires, are of a young woman called Sadako, from the island of Oshima, whose mother was known for her occult powers. soon enough both Reiko and her husband have watched the video, so they must race against time to unravel the secret and lift the curse.

Persons of interest

Nanako Matsushima .... Reiko Asakawa
Miki Nakatani .... Mai Takano
Hiroyuki Sanada .... Ryuji Takayama
Yuko Takeuchi .... Tomoko Oishi
Hitomi Sato .... Masami Kurahashi
Yoichi Numata .... Takashi Yamamura
Yutaka Matsushige .... Yoshino
Katsumi Muramatsu .... Koichi Asakawa
Rikiya Otaka .... Yoichi Asakawa
Masako .... Shizuko Yamamura
Daisuke Ban .... Dr Heihachiro Ikuma
Kiyoshi Risho .... Omiya the Cameraman
Yûrei Yanagi .... Okazaki
Koji Suzuki .... Author
Hiroshi Takahashi .... Screenwriter
Hideo Nakata .... Screenwriter

Cinematic intelligence sources

Awards and film festivals:

Brussels Fantasy 1999: Golden Raven (directing)
Catalonia Film Festival 1999: best film, best visual effects
Cinematic Intelligence Agency Trenchcoat Awards 2002
Melbourne Film Festival: Screening

See also Ring 2 (Ringu 2)
NB: Japanese language dialogue with English language subtitles
Studios and distributors:

Potential

Intelligence analyst

Secret Agent Acid Thunder

Theatrical report

This is my first visit to the Valhalla Cinema. I'm in the little cinema upstairs - it's quite small, only 35 seats across, and there's a calming aura radiating from all around me: the walls, the ceiling, the curtain on the small stage, even the seat in which I'm sitting.

The music stops, the lights fade and the curtain parts. The movie begins.

Ring doesn't seem like a thriller, more like a B-grade drama from the 80s. What little Japanese I can remember tells me that the dialogue lacks that something special, but after a while I begins to watch the movie more than the subtitles, and it's as if I understand it all, as if the characters are speaking English.

I saw the most chilling movie ever. The music has nothing to do with the rest of the film - just when you think that something is going to happen, nothing does, and something chilling does happen when you least expect it to.

Ring is about taboos, it's the first film to combine multimedia as part of a curse and it has a far from happy ending. Coolness.