Pathologist Dr. Ando performs an autopsy on his recently deceased friend Ryuji Takayama, and finds a cryptic note in Takayama's stomach. He starts investigating and his search leads him to a cursed videotape, that apparently anyone who watches it will die a week after. He believes that Takayama wanted him to find and watch the tape and so he does. But after watching it, strange things start to happen, and maybe it was never meant for Ando to watch it in the first place.
Rasen takes off were Ringu ended and this time leaves a man named Ando to try and find out the secret behind the mysterious videotape. In Ringu, when Sadako came crawling out from the tv, the guy who was in that room was Ryuji Takayama. So in Rasen, his body is found and his old friend Ando start searching for clues to what caused Takayama's death.
I found this movie to be quite interesting at first, but after a while it unfortunately turned out to not be so good after all. The interesting thing was that it's like Ringu continues, but then things took a different turn and did not really deliver in the end.
 
Even though the story is quite interesting, the big let-down is that it's not scary, not even comparable to Ringu in any way. We get to see a lot of Sadako in Rasen, only problem is that she's not scary here. The hair over her face is gone and so takes all the mystery away, and that was a real bummer. Also the movie goes more in a scientific direction, with the curse of the videotape really being a virus that's transmitted by one person to another.
Personally, I think that this scientific turn kinda makes Rasen quite boring. Ringu was interesting since it had all this mystery surrounding it, with the tape and how the curse got spread. Here they take all that mystery away, saying it's a real virus, like a disease. It was better when it was more supernatural.
Rasen was originally supposed to be Ringu 2 and should therefore also be watched after Ringu since it's a sequel. Ringu 2 was made only because the audience reaction to Rasen was not that great.
Rasen is more drama than horror and is a kinda slow moving film. It's a bit interesting and if you like the other films in the series you might wanna give Rasen a try too. The lack of scares are brutal and that was a bit of a downer, just like the scientific turn was. I'm happy to have seen it but it's not something I would watch a second time.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE: Spiral
MOVIE YEAR: 1998
DIRECTOR: Jôji Iida
WRITING CREDITS: Kôji Suzuki, Jôji Iida
GENRE: Thriller, Crime
CAST: Koichi Sato, Miki Nakatani, Hiroyuki Sanada
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 97 min
RATING: 4/10
Rasen Website/IMDB Click here
Rasen Trailer Click here
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