Ringu Blu-ray Review
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, October 24, 2019
Note: This release is available as this standalone disc, as well as being available as part of
Ringu Collection. That collection features white covers (as opposed to this disc's
black cover, as seen above), but the disc contents are
the same. This release has an insert booklet with an essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas; that essay, along with several others, is available as part
of what is more of a pamphlet included in the box set.
J-Horror.
What do
you think of when someone mentions this "national" genre? If you're like any number of fans, and as both commentator David
Kalat and even the back cover verbiage of this release mention, the
Ring* series will no doubt be at the top of the list. Interestingly, the
back cover
states that the original
Ring film "launched the J-horror boom in the West", though Kalat takes at least some issue with that assertion in
his appealing
analysis of the film. Kind of interestingly (and maybe just a bit peculiarly) given this series' outsized reputation, none of the
Ring films
has evidently been released on Blu-ray for the domestic American market before this, but Arrow, long the curator of niche items for some devoted
collectors, has once again come to the rescue with both a standalone release of
Ring, as well as a boxed set including four films.
*Kalat makes a cogent case that the coinage
Ringu is due to the transliteration of Japanese orthography, and that the film's director
himself
told Kalat the name of the film was
Ring, so this review will utilize that name.
Note: While my hunch is there aren't that many people who aren't familiar with the basic story of
Ring, especially given
The Ring, its well remembered American remake, and while this
review won't include any
outright spoilers, for those who
are unacquainted with the basic story, there are some salient plot
points discussed below, so proceed at your own risk.
Having spent much of my adult life offering opinions on various home media fare, including too many "straight to video" entries than I care to name
(and/or remember), I only half jokingly state that, yes, there
were cursed VHS tapes back in the day.
Ring of course plays
upon
that conceit, beginning with a kind of excited but slightly nerdy discussion between two female schoolmates who are aware of the supposed
existence
of a weird tape that, when watched, begins an inevitable series of events leading to the viewer's death. Unfortunately for one of the schoolgirls, it
turns out
she saw the video, and it probably doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure out what happens next, though director Hideo
Nakata
does hedge his bets just a
little by refraining from any truly graphic imagery (and in fact
Ring on the whole really doesn't traffic
in
"traditional" horror blood and guts).
A relative of the now deceased girl turns out to be investigative reporter Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima), who knows of the stories of the
cursed video and who begins looking into the death not just of her niece, but some of her niece's friends. That ultimately leads to an isolated cabin
in the woods (not
this one), where the victims evidently
vacationed before their demises, and it's there that Reiko, because she's the focal female in a horror film, finds a mysterious tape and decides to
watch it. I'm obviously joking again when I say that the video probably would have only gotten half a star from most reviewers for both content
and video quality, as it's an inchoate "story" delivered via a pixellated, grainy mess with hard to make out imagery exacerbated by some tracking
problems. One way or the other,
it's clear (or at least implied) that Reiko may be the latest person to be cursed, and it's that unsettling feeling that informs most of the rest of the
story, even as Reiko attempts to ferret out the meaning behind the patently bizarre imagery.
Reiko and her ex-husband Ryūji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada) start poking around to figure out what's going on, a quest made more panicked after
Reiko discovers their young son watching the video. There's arguably just a
bit too much extraneous material stuffed into both these and
some other supporting characters, as Reiko's understandably desperate attempts to get to the bottom of things (no pun intended, for those who
know the revelation the film offers) ends up involving a host of paranormal phenomena before getting to what is in essence a murder mystery.
Ring is rather notable both for its intriguing subtext(s) and for its completely unsettling mood, a mood which is arrived at without (as
mentioned above) much in the way of truly graphic imagery. There's an elegiac quality to the film that's really quite remarkable not just within the
annals of the horror genre (J- or otherwise), but I'd argue within the larger context of relatively contemporary film itself.