Ring (1998)

best movie i've ever seen.

It's fun, it's light, [but] it has a hard time when its tries to get heavy.

It was OK. I don't see why everyone loves it so much. It wasn't very smart or deep or well-directed.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

After watching a mysterious videotape, a woman finds herself cursed to die within a week afterward searches the various clues within the video to find the truth about the tape's origins and connection to a legend about a vicious woman before her time runs out and the curse consumes her.While this one had some really good stuff, overall the flaws here take centerstage. The main aspect hurts this one is the fact that the main storyline is incredibly flawed and makes little sense. As the ghost wants her body found out, the purpose of making a videotape that originates in a backcountry community that plays only on a locally-broadcasted channel that's supposed to generate interest in solving her mysterious disappearance, an event that's counterintuitive to what she really wants. Rather than bringing a discovery to her situation, placing the means of your discovery should come about rather easily rather than going for a more crowd-friendly atmosphere instead of an isolated and partially obscure part of the country is far more ideal and thus setting up the rampage to follow. Likewise, purposefully killing those who are potentially there to help makes the whole point moot as that shrinks the number of those able to potentially help the cause, really leaving the plot quite troublesome. Beyond that, the fact that the film is just so slowly-paced and lacking of ghost action that the middle segment completely eliminates the killing to focus on the investigation into the video tape's images and source. This is spent more on looking for photographs of the missing couple, visiting the different locations of the classmates such as their school or the cabin in particular where they contracted the curse or sitting around attempting to understand the concept of the curse with her boyfriend as she is getting him to believe in the curse and trying to decipher it all, and none of those are crawling with horrific ideas or concepts. These are practically non-events that while building up the mythos around the legend all tend to prevent this one from really getting going leaving this to drag on to the final twenty minutes. Granted, that's great stuff that happens here, but it comes too little too late to save the rest of the film though it somewhat evens it out to make it borderline watchable. The film's at it's best when detailing the creepy and oftentimes downright chilling atmosphere of the tape, offering up plenty of suspense as they slowly work out the cause and details of the tape. Knowing how the visuals were created and how they came to be affixed onto the tape itself offers this one it's best sense of energy and atmosphere as one-by-one all the pieces slowly work themselves together to realize how their journey ties together. From the distorted photographs leading into the idea of the island and the research they conduct their as well as the revelations about the child in the past which starts to play a prominent role in how this one ends up. From the encounter in the well with the body to the stellar and absolutely chilling sequence with the ghost making one last appearance inside their house for a truly shocking and memorable scare. Coupled with an effective ghost design that's really creepy, these hold this one up.Rated Unrated/R: Violence, Language and intense themes of children-in-jeopardy.

Over the years,Japanese horror films have become a thing now with A tale of two sisters to Ju On to Audition,Ring started the whole thing. Ring tells the story about a woman who struggles with her job and raising her seven year old son and when her niece dies along with 3 other teens at the same time,same night of the same thing,she starts to investigate leading to story of a cursed videotape you watch and in seven days you die made by a woman with a terrifying and horrible past. Ring introduced Japanese icon Sadako. Ring is so horrifying and scary because of it having no crappy effects there is just creepy sound effects and a woman crawling out of a TV,the acting in the film is highly award winning,the film has not have any of your typical jump scares at all,the film has loads of creepy sound effects that somehow work with the scenes they use it on and this film only,the ending to the film is very scary as everybody knows. Ju On is scary and brilliant but it dose not beat Ring!!

I am one of those people who wished they had seen the original version before seeing the remake. I made this mistake twice now. Not anymore. Last year, around the same time, I started watching Japanese horror movies. I watched The Grudge trilogy (2004, 2006 & 2009) before watching the 2000 movies, Ju-On: The Curse and its sequel; which I both had mistaken for the movies that was remade as The Grudge, despite the fact that certain elements were taken from The Curse; such as the jaw scene. However, luckily enough, I have a chance to make this right when I plan on watching Dark Water soon. I also watched Kairo (2001) before watching its American remake: Pulse (2006), and I'm glad I did. If you haven't seen it yet, I strongly urge you to do so.Ringu is a quite minimalistic horror movie as a whole, which is definitely not a bad thing. In fact, it's even better. Overall, I prefer The Ring over Ringu, but there are certain elements that Ringu has that its American remake, The Ring, doesn't have. Ringu doesn't rely on jump scares as much as The Ring does. Like most Japanese horror movies that came after Ringu, it relies on its atmosphere. While the feeling of dread is surely not missed in The Ring, the combination with its cheap scare tactics is what ultimately weakens the atmosphere in comparison.As a result of watching The Ring before Ringu, I was quite underwhelmed by the last scene of the movie. I did not feel frightened by the scene because I knew what was coming. If I hadn't seen the remake first, and thus hadn't known what would happen, this movie surely would've scared the living hell out of me. In the end, The Ring blew Ringu right out of the water. But for reasons very obvious: a bigger budget and improved technology, it is clearly the superior movie. A 6/10 for Ringu, and an 8/10 for The Ring.

Teenagers Masami and Tomoko talk about a videotape that kills you a week after viewing it. Tomoko dies with a horrified expression and Masami goes insane. TV reporter Reiko Asakawa is investigating the killer videotape and is shocked by her niece Tomoko's death. Tomoko and three friends had rented a cabin in Izu. Reiko goes to Izu and retrieves the videotape. She watches the tape herself setting off the cycle once again.I watched the American version before the Japanese original. I think it actually helped me follow the story because the American movie essentially copied the Japanese movie. This one is not quite as polished as the American version. However it has the same moody atmosphere if not more. This is an effective ghostly horror no matter which version.