Barnes & Noble

Films are usually remade not because they need to be fixed but because of an audience's unprecedented love affair with the original. In the case of Hideo Nakata's Ringu, the source for Gore Verbinski's shocker The Ring, the love affair reached the level of phenomenon in Japan -- where sequels, a TV series, and unending merchandise have made Ringu the country's Blair Witch. The simple story revolves around the mystery of a videotape rumored to carry a curse; anyone who watches the tape has only seven days left to live. As a journalist, her ex-husband, and their son become encircled by the lethal lore, the haunted tape's history and meaning become more and more apparent. But is there a way to stop the curse? Ringu's frightening power comes in part from making something as plain and unexpected as a videotape the focus of absolute terror. Like The Exorcist, the movie also thrives on a tone of inescapable doom interrupted by intermittent death-throe shocks. Rarely are the scares sensational in style, but they are always sensational in effect: The most spine-tingling moments involve a smudged photo and a reflection in a TV screen (and revealing that spoils nothing), while the cursed video itself -- which we get to see in toto (gulp!) -- appears at first to be outtakes from a Marilyn Manson music video, but it's easily one of the scariest avant-garde films you'll ever see. Surprisingly, Ringu actually made its initial appearance as a TV movie in Japan, before Nakata revised it for a theatrical release. Tony Nigro

All Movie Guide

In this psychological horror story from Japan, a legend circulates among teenagers that if one watches a certain video at a certain time of the night, the telephone will ring right afterward, and one week later, you will die. When Masami (Hitomi Sato) tells her friend Imako this story, she scoffs -- but a week later, Imako dies in an auto accident. Imako's aunt, a television journalist named Reiko (Nanako Matsushima), hears that not long before she died, Imako was watching a strange video with her friends -- all of whom have turned up dead. Reiko tracks down a copy of the video, and as she watches its strange, spectral images, the telephone begins to ring....The next morning, Reiko begins a desperate search to solve the mystery of the video, convinced she has only seven days to live; assisting her is Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada), a mathematics expert and her former husband. Ringu was a box-office success in its native Japan, and a surprise blockbuster in Hong Kong, where it became the biggest grossing film of the first half of 1999. Mark Deming

Product Details

• UPC: 678149039528
• Source: DREAMWORKS VIDEO
• Region Code: 1
• Aspect Ratio: Theatre Wide-Screen (1.85.1)
• Presentation: Wide Screen
• Sound: Dolby Digital Stereo, Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround
• Language: Japanese
• Subtitles: English, Español, Français
• Time: 1:36:00
• Sales Rank: 19,249

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