When reading up about J-Horror,I've always noticed that Ring/Ringu (1998) is credited with starting a new wave of J-Horror,and of joining Scream (1996),as the films which revived the Horror genre after the low-point it had hit in mid-90's cinema. Deciding this October to view a number of J-Horror,I read up on Ringu,and was surprised to find out,that like Takashi Miike's two very good straight to video debuts, Ringu had started as a small TV movie,which led to me putting the first ring on.
View on the film:
Done as a TV movie, director Chisui Takigawa keeps the gore restrained, but Takigawa and cinematographer Kazumi Iwata surprisingly dip into the Pinku genre for some sleaze,with Sadako (who looks like an angelic adult, and does not have the ghostly, long black hair and strange movements Sadako would become famous for) spending most of the film naked. Shot on video, the flatness of the image and nature fuzz from the format actually works for the flick, due to it creating an appearance of the film having been passed along on tape (this is helped by the outdoor scenes clearly being filmed secretly in real city centres.)
Playing the tape, Takigawa stages Sadako's murders from an empathetic side, with Takigawa's close-ups not being focused on gore, but the embrace and exchange of words between Sadako and her next victim. The first adaptation of a Koji Suzuki novel, the screenplay by Jôji Iida and Taizô Soshigaya builds J-Horror dread towards the next sighting of Sadako with a slick mystery of reporter Kazuyuki Asakawa trying to solve the origin of the images on the video before he is to be killed, and uncovering Sadako's family life on the way. Whilst the edge is dented by a Telenovela side of melodrama, the writers always keep the seven down countdown as the main focus of Asakawa, as Sadako opens the ring for the first time.
View on the film:
Done as a TV movie, director Chisui Takigawa keeps the gore restrained, but Takigawa and cinematographer Kazumi Iwata surprisingly dip into the Pinku genre for some sleaze,with Sadako (who looks like an angelic adult, and does not have the ghostly, long black hair and strange movements Sadako would become famous for) spending most of the film naked. Shot on video, the flatness of the image and nature fuzz from the format actually works for the flick, due to it creating an appearance of the film having been passed along on tape (this is helped by the outdoor scenes clearly being filmed secretly in real city centres.)
Playing the tape, Takigawa stages Sadako's murders from an empathetic side, with Takigawa's close-ups not being focused on gore, but the embrace and exchange of words between Sadako and her next victim. The first adaptation of a Koji Suzuki novel, the screenplay by Jôji Iida and Taizô Soshigaya builds J-Horror dread towards the next sighting of Sadako with a slick mystery of reporter Kazuyuki Asakawa trying to solve the origin of the images on the video before he is to be killed, and uncovering Sadako's family life on the way. Whilst the edge is dented by a Telenovela side of melodrama, the writers always keep the seven down countdown as the main focus of Asakawa, as Sadako opens the ring for the first time.