Shortly after the death of her cousin, reporter Reiko starts hearing stories about a mysterious videotape that apparently kills people seven days after that they've watched it. When she at first do not believe the rumours, she changes her opinion when she finds out that her cousin's friend who watched the tape died exactly one week after. She starts to investigate and ends up viewing the tape herself, and after that strange things starts to happen. In order to stop the death clock that has started ticking, Reiko teams up with her ex-husband to try and solve the mystery of the tape and the force behind it.
I'm more than willing to admit that this is the absolute scariest and most freaky movie I've seen in my entire life. I've been watching all kinds of horror and weird movies ever since I was a kid with my mom constantly trying to stop me from watching them, and usually I'm not too often really affected of the things that I see, but Ringu alone scared me beyond repair when I first saw it. It's with no doubt the scariest movie I've seen to date and I'm not sure if anything will ever be able to top it. I saw the movie many years ago when it was still pretty much unknown to the western world, and a friend over in England sent me a VHS tape of the film after he had been telling me for a few weeks over the phone just how scary it was. Stupid as I was back then, I was quite sure that it wouldn't be even half as scary as he had said, and I was pretty much sure he was just exaggerating. But hell, he really wasn't.
I was studying at the time and was not supposed to be in class until late the next day. So there, in the middle of the night alone in my apartment, I put the tape into my VCR and watched the whole film. When it was almost finished and I was sure it was all over, I thought to myself that it was a good film that had some suspense to it, but couldn't believe why my friend had gotten so scared watching it. And then it came, that is Sadako crawling out from the tv and I could feel my heart missing a couple of beats as I had this horrible scene infront of my eyes. Needless to say, I didn't sleep much that night, or the night after that, and the night after that...
 
When people ask me about what movie I have found to be the most scary, my answer is always the same; Ringu. When you were a kid and watched horror movies, there were a lot of them that creeped you out and that you of course found to be horrific, but that is also when being a kid, and those movies I found to be scary back then are obviously not half as scary, or even scary at all for that matter, now. But Ringu is definitely the worst/best film I've seen in my grown-up life of watching horror. And the thing that is the main attraction of this movie is of course the mystery that it has to it. The whole film is packed to the brim with mystery, and it's that feeling of the unknown that makes it so much worse. Even the last scene has a 110 percent mystery to it, because even if you get to see Sadako, she's still wearing her hair over her face so that you can't really see her which obviously brings a helluva lot of mystery to the film along with that it delivers an enormously creepy feel. Also, the way that she walks and looks of course also adds genuine fear.
I've come across people every once in a while who have said that they didn't find Ringu to be scary and some have even said that it's an overrated film. But personally I believe that if you won't get scared when watching the film, you have obviously not paid the proper attention to it or, even worse, you lack the imagination and fantasy that is so needed when watching horror films. I believe that all that is in the film is of pure perfection, everything from the acting to the script, the story, the atmosphere and everything else. And I also believe that even though there are a lot of fantastic ones out there, this is one of the best Japanese films ever made.
So I kinda ended up writing more of an article about Ringu rather than an actual review, but what the hell, you've probably already seen the film right? If you haven't, I guess it's quite obvious what you should do next.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Ring
MOVIE YEAR: 1998
DIRECTOR: Hideo Nakata
WRITING CREDITS: Kôji Suzuki, Hiroshi Takahashi
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Nanako Matsushima, Miki Nakatani, Hiroyuki Sanada
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 96 min
RATING: 10/10
Ringu Website/IMDB Click here
Ringu Trailer Click here
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