Ringu Review

Ringu review.

Twenty-five years ago, Ringu debuted in Japan. It would serve as the catalyst to a surge in popularity for J-horror in the US…and see a successful American remake follow to boot. Let’s look back and try to discover why this movie broke through.

Classic movie reviews will contain spoilers.

Ringu

Directed by Hideo Nakata

Screenplay by Hiroshi Takahashi

Starring Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rikiya Otaka, Miki Nakatani and Yuko Takeuchi

Ringu Review

Ringu debuted in Japan a quarter of a century ago.  Well…kind of.  Technically speaking its title translates to Ring and it was titled Ringu for US release purposes later.  We’ll just refer to it by its US title for simplicity.  Of course, the name you are most likely to know this story by is The Ring…the Naomi Watts starring American remake from 2002.

Reviewing Ringu from an American perspective makes comparisons to its wildly popular remake inevitable.  The Ring was a pop culture phenomenon in the states…which is pretty cool when you consider it was adapting a different culture’s movie.  Ringu was a huge hit in Japan upon release as well.  It’s left a legacy in both markets…and beyond.  Ringu revived horror in Japan, influenced a wave of horror in the US and popularized J-Horror everywhere.  A large impact for a relatively small production. 

That’s the story of Ringu.   The story in Ringu will be incredibly familiar to anyone who watched The Ring.  The American remake is an almost scene for scene recreation for the first two thirds of the story.  There are, however, some big differences that emerge.  The Ring makes some decisions that improve upon the original text.  But…even with the benefit of a fully realized template to build from, Ringu does do some things better itself.

The most glaring difference between the two is the usage of a couple of characters.  The Ring puts a lot of focus on Rachel’s son Aidan.  The character exists in Ringu as well…but it’s a much more muted presentation.  Both characters still watch the cursed video…ramping up the need to find a way around the curse in time to save him.  In the original, however, that’s about as much as he is there do.  While Aidan is given memorable character traits and is more involved in his mother’s story…his Japanese counterpart Yoichi appears in a couple of scenes and is then relegated to the background. 

Replacing his screen time and taking a far more active role in the events of Ringu is the character of his father.  The character also exists in both versions…used to much greater effect in the original.   In the Japanese version the father is an equal part of tracking down information on the video.  The remake presents a character who is along for the ride but seemingly not as invested despite having a ticking clock on his own life.  The original fleshes him out and gives us a more engaging character.

The most successful difference on Ringu’s side is the attention played to time running out on the leads.  It presents a much more realistic and emotional take on the curse.  Days pass by in The Ring with little comment or attention on the sand running out in the hourglass.  Not so in Ringu.  It places needed emotional beats as the characters wrestle with the inevitability of their fates.  It’s a much deeper story because of these moments.  A layer that the remake ushers to the side too often to resonate.

There are a couple of things that Ringu doesn’t do as well, however.  It introduces a second supernatural element that doesn’t work well enough to justify it.  The investigation in the original is aided by flashbacks that we see through the father’s ability to see visions.  It’s a surprising inclusion given Ringu’s otherwise grounded nature.  It comes across as more of a cheat than a treat.  An easy way to dump information that provides no other interest on its own. 

Ringu also doesn’t feel as scary as the remake does.  While both are steeped in the investigative horror sub-genre…The Ring finds another level to the horror aspect.  Ringu is more interested in presenting the curse as a creeping sadness than dressing it up in a haunting atmosphere.  This is where the differences between the two become the most interesting.  They’re delivering the same story from a slightly different angle.  You can debate which one is more effective, but they both are in their own way.

The ending of the original is a little different as well.  Everything that happens in the remake happens here…but the decision at the end is a little more fleshed out.  Where the remake ends with a haunting question of what they do with the copy they make to uncurse the son…the original answers it.  We see mother and son driving to her father’s house (a character not included in the remake) to pass the curse to him.  The plan from there is to make another copy and pass it to someone else.  The goal is to spread the tape to everyone…as Sadako (the Samara character in the remake) wanted.  That way no one dies.  It’s a more hopeful ending…but also a more unbelievable one.  Narratively it’s a bit more resonant though.

It’s tough to look back on a movie that has such a famous, and successful, remake.  You have to be mindful to credit Ringu for things that feel like old hat…because it is the sole reason they exist in the first place.  So much of the remake is directly lifted that it stands as a compliment to the original’s work.  There’s no need to reinvent when Ringu built such a solid base.  For any culture…in any country…even 25 years later.

Scare Value

The truth is…the American remake of Ringu does improve on a few aspects of the original. It also loses some key things in translation. There is a heavier weight of inevitability surrounding this original creation. It isn’t as scary…and it leans too heavily into the supernatural to streamline its investigative horror elements…but it still feels more real in spite of that. More than a footnote in horror history, Ringu introduced the world to a new brand of horror we are still seeing do big business to this day.

4.5/5

Ringu Link

Streaming on Shudder

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Streaming on Tubi

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Buy on Blu-Ray from Amazon

Ringu Trailer

Check out another review of a cursed horror movie, Ox-Head Village