The Spiral (aka Rasen) (1998)
Posted on June 19, 2005
Filed Under Asian movies, Ghosts, Sequels, Series
The Spiral’s reputation seems to rest more on the film’s status - or lack of - than anything to do with the movie itself. Based on the second of Koji Suzuki’s Ring novels, Joji Iida shot the film almost back to back with Hideo Nakata’s peerless adaption of the first novel, and the results were released in Japanese cinemas simultaneously. But whereas Ring sparked what can only be described as an international phenomenon, The Spiral bombed, and was later overwritten by Nakata’s own Ring 2. Effectively exiled from the Ring saga - in cinema terms at least - the film has only recently been made available on DVD in the West,but remains relatively unknown.
I’m not going to add to the acres of critical analysis that already surround Nakata’s Ring, but in essence the film success lies in the way it lifts the haunting imagery from Suzuki’s novels and translates it into a compelling ghost story, junking all of the pseudo-science that drags the novels down. Suzuki often seems like he’s embarrassed to be writing horror, and so every fantastical element like a killer videotape has a rather dodgy scientific explanation that’s neither good science nor dramatically necessary. Iida’s problem is that he works far more slavishly to Suzuki’s novel than Nakata, making The Spiral more of a medical thriller than a horror. In an astonishingly boring interview on the DVD, Iida explains that he was far more interesting in treating the story as science fiction rather than horror and it shows. The book’s problems are magnified on the screen; “science gone mad” rather than scares is the order of the day, but it comes across as contrived rather than interesting, with characters in lab coats making leaps of logic that even the 60s Batman series would have winced at. And ultimately, it’s not all that interesting; revealing the video virus to be a mutation of smallpox may be more credible, but it hardly as arresting as a scraggy black-haired woman lurching out of the television.
But despite this, The Spiral is not a bad film. Put aside the silly science and there’s an interesting human drama that’s played out; Andou’s guilt over the death of his son leads him to a terrible moral dilemma, but interestingly, the implications of his decision don’t become clear until the end of the film, long after he has made his choice. In a nice nod to Ring’s conclusion, the ending is quietly devastating, and beautifully played out. The performances are solid if unspectacular, and there’s some great Sadako stuff, even if her appearance and use here is entirely at odds with how she appears in Ring. In fact, despite The Spiral following directly on from Ring, there’s very little continuity between the two films; one suspects that Nakata and Iida never compared notes during filming, and unfortunately for the latter, it’s made his film all the easier to drop from from the ‘Ring Cycle’.
Ultimately though, as someone who approached the film having been wowed by Nakata’s film and the power of the overall concept, it’s hard not to be disappointed by The Spiral, and although in itself it’s nowhere near as bad as its history would suggest, it’s still a very minor film. Nakata’s own Ring 2 is a whole lot better - although basically a rather messy remix of the first film’s imagery, he at least realised that the imagery is the centre of the story’s appeal, and the key to translating the novels successfully onto the screen. Frankly, after the legendary conclusion to Ring, talking heads in a lab simply doesn’t cut it.
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