The Movie Book (Big Ideas Simply Explained) (2016)

IN CONTEXT

GENRE

Horror

DIRECTOR

Hideo Nakata

WRITER

Hiroshi Takahashi (screenplay); Kôji Suzuki (novel)

STARS

Nanako Matsushima, Hioyuki Sanada, Rikiya Ôtaka, Yôichi Numata, Miki Nakatani

BEFORE

1996 Don’t Look Up, Nakata’s first feature, is not a box-office hit but gives him the critical prestige to direct Ringu.

AFTER

1999 Nakata completes the story with Ringu 2.

2002 Nakata directs Dark Water, which, like his previous two movies, is remade by Hollywood.

As with many Western horrors—Poltergeist (1982) and The Blair Witch Project (1999), for example—Hideo Nakata’s movie Ringu (The Ring) draws its shivers from folklore and legend: in this case an old samurai tale transferred to modern-day urban Japan. The movie is based on Kôji Suzuki’s hit 1991 novel of the same name, which in turn was inspired by a well-known 18th-century ghost story about a serving girl, Okiku, who is murdered by her lord.

Taking a key element from US horror movies in which teenagers are drawn to objects or places that are taboo or forbidden, Ringu concerns a videotape that is being passed around provincial schools. The tape lasts just a few seconds and contains strange imagery of a circle of light, a woman brushing her hair, a man with his head covered, a pictogram seen in a close-up of an eye—all played in the static crackle of a degraded, much-watched video. After each viewing of the tape, the viewer receives a phone call saying they will die in seven days. A week later they are dead, their faces twisted by some unimaginable terror.

The teen-horror element initially seems to be a misdirect, since Ringu quite quickly becomes a detective yarn, with journalist Reiko (Nanako Matsushima) becoming interested in the case after discovering that her niece is one of the latest victims. Retracing the girl’s final steps, Reiko finds the videotape and watches it. She then has seven days to avert her own death—a race against time to decipher the mysterious imagery she has seen. By chance, Reiko’s teenage son watches the tape too, raising the stakes even higher.

“It’s not of this world. It’s Sadako’s fury. And she’s put a curse on us.”

Ryuji Takayama / Ringu

Nakata’s movie inspired a new genre of Japanese chillers, several of which were remade by Hollywood. In these “J-horror” movies, the terror is less explicit, with less reliance on “jump scares” and more left to the imagination.

Ghosts of the past

With Reiko inching closer to solving the mystery, it almost seems as though Nakata is going to abandon the horror element altogether, as Reiko begins to piece together the story of a famous psychic who lost her powers when her daughter, Sadako (Rie Inô), was born. For a time, the story winds back into the past to uncover the terrible secrets that have begun to seep into the present.

As with other Japanese horrors that Ringu later inspired, there is a prospect of redemption; although she is clearly a malevolent spirit, Sadako (and Okiku in the original folktale) has a sympathetic backstory, and so the focus switches from the untimely deaths of teenagers to Reiko’s attempt to right the injustice done to Sadako in the past and lift her curse. And yet there are virtuoso moments of goose-bump horror to come, and images that will haunt the viewer long after watching this movie. Although Hollywood produced a watchable remake in 2002, it could not inspire the same dread.

The figure of Sadako became an instant icon and influenced a whole genre. The imagery is based on Japanese yurei ghosts: she has a pale face and long, matted hair, suggesting that her corpse received no burial rites (Japanese women were traditionally buried with their hair up, not down). In this, the movie explores the clash of ancient folktale and Japanese modernity, with the ghost’s terror hiding in something as prosaic as a videotape.

Reiko, a journalist, stares at the static that marks the end of the deadly videotape. Within moments, her phone will ring and a mysterious voice will tell her of her fate.

Born in rural Okayama in 1961, Hideo Nakata worked for seven years as an assistant director before making his debut with the 1996 fantasy-horror Don’t Look Up (or Ghost Actress). He secured his reputation internationally with Ringu, switching the gender of the protagonist in the tale on which it is based. Ringu ushered in a new genre of Japanese horror—J-horror—in which female leads are stalked by the ghosts of young girls. He continued the formula with 2002’s Dark Water.

1996 Don’t Look Up

1998 Ringu

1999 Ringu 2

2002 Dark Water

What else to watch: Kwaidan (1964) ✵ Poltergeist (1982) ✵ Ghost Actress (1996) ✵ Rasen (1998) ✵ Kairo (2001) ✵ Dark Water (2002) ✵ One Missed Call (2003) ✵ Ju-on: The Grudge (2004) ✵ Pulse (2006) ✵ It Follows (2014)