Ringu – Ring (1998)

Directed by: Hideo Nakata | 96 minutes | horror, thriller | Actors: Nanako Matsushima, Miki Nakatani, Hiroyuki Sanada, Yoko Takeuchi, Hitomi Satô, Yoichi Numata, Yutaka Matsushige, Katsumi Muramatsu, Rikiya Otaka, Masako, Daisuke Ban, Kiyoshi Risho, Yûrei Yanagi, Yôko Shimizushima, Kiriko Shimizushima

The scariest monsters are minors. Nothing is more perverse than a child with a rotten soul. The Japanese director Hideo Nakata made a smart move by reserving the star role in ‘Ringu’ for a bone-thin girl with unwashed hair. She doesn’t have much to say, the youthful Sadako with her crumbling nails, but her threat is palpable throughout the film, whether the teevee is on or off. Thanks to that oppressive atmosphere, ‘Ringu’ became one of the most successful Japanese horror films of all time. Around the turn of the millennium, horror land was full of scary kids (think of ‘Ju-on’ and ‘Dark Water’) and the J-horror started a worldwide revival. The Americans, who are not fond of overdubs and subtitles, were quick to give this revival an extra impulse with good and less successful remakes such as ‘The Ring’ and ‘The Grudge’.

Although the American remake of ‘Ringu’ turned out quite nice, it can’t quite match the original. While ‘The Ring’ has some nice shock moments and a storyline adapted to a popcorn audience, it’s less haunting. Hideo Nakata’s film, on the other hand, is a bit more difficult for Westerners to grasp because of the cultural differences, but it is also much more atmospheric, precisely because of that unmistakable Japanese touch. On the one hand you have traditional Japan with its folk tales of vengeful ghosts, on the other you find the anonymous flats and office buildings, populated by hard workers who hardly have time for a social life. In an individualized society like this, loneliness is lurking and television offers an easy alternative to human contact. Seen in that light, it is not surprising that the lines between the living and the dead are sometimes shorter than between the living.

Not that Nakata is hammering this message in. He is a man of subtleties, not of grand gestures. Where ‘Ringu’ outlines the disturbed relationship between Reiko and her young son in short fragments, the remake bombards him into an important plot line, with accompanying tear-jerking entanglements. In ‘Ringu’ the long-haired tormentor is a silent, elusive figure, in ‘The Ring’ an obstinate chatterbox with an Addams Family haircut. And then the finale of ‘Ringu’, which will go down in the annals as one of the most sinister horror scenes of all time. In the remake, it looks like getting through a ring, but it’s significantly less scary. Sometimes you just have to sacrifice some quality when polishing. Scratches give character. ‘Ringu’ is not a perfect film, but it is very effective. And speaking of scratches: ‘Ringu’ is probably one of the few films that looks better later on a stuttering video than on a scratch-free DVD.