Hideo Nakata’s astonishing adaption of Koji Suzuki’s best-selling novel was for many people their first (and possibly only) brush with the murky world of Asian horror. The film’s global success, and the various franchises it has spawned, was something of a watershed for international cinema; it almost single-handedly spearheaded the Japanese invasion that has dominated Western horror, both for the American studios looking for the latest hot property to remake and for cinema-goers tantalised by the promise of what has been dubbed ‘Asia Extreme’.
Although it’s easy to be cynical about US cinema’s current love-in with the the Japanese, Ring’s release did at least help commercial Western horror cinema back out of a rather nasty cul-de-sac. By the late 90s, genuinely well-crafted scares had given way either to the sneering irony of the Scream series or gimmicky, sub-Blair Witch reality devices. Nakata’s film stuck out like a sore thumb, in that it has none of the jittery “oh, it was just a cat” shocks Western audiences had become accustomed to; instead, Ring is a very linear film with a rising sense of fear and dread that by the conclusion has reached nerve-shredding proportions. The ticking time-bomb of the seven day curse is the only dynamic needed to drive the plot along, without the need for artificial twists or shocks. The story, and Nakata’s gradual drip-feeding of information are enough.
This last part may seem quite strange considering I’ve already been quite critical of Suzuki’s original novels here, but as I hinted at before, Nakata’s probably the best editor that Suzuki’s ever had, powerfully exploiting everything the book got right (the imagery) and dropping everything the book got wrong (the silly pseudo-science). You probably don’t need to be a rocket scientist to work out that a story about a killer videotape is going to work better on the screen than in print, and Nakata’s dark, haunting representation of the tape’s contents (which is fairly faithful to Suzuki’s description) has added resonance for an audience watching the film in the same way Asakawa watches the video. Equally, the film’s most striking image (Sadako’s final attack on Takayama) was one of Nakata’s own creation, riffing on his source material in a way that defies any scientific explanation but is guaranteed to leave you open-mouthed. The junking of the novel’s science and rationale actually makes the film scarier in that it becomes impossible to for the characters to establish a fair playing field. In fact, the world of Ring is desperately unfair; the ending is logical but so devastatingly depressing that it hits you like a punch in the chest and stays with you long after the credits (and accompanying J-pop wailing) are over.
Outclassing any form of the story that preceded or followed it, Ring is a hypnotic thing of beauty. It’s not just a film, it’s a cultural moment, and its effects are felt ever more strongly. For first-timers or conoisseurs of the genre, this is essential.