Ring (film) - WikiHQ

is a 1998 Japanese supernatural psychological horror film directed by Hideo Nakata and written by Hiroshi Takahashi, based on the 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki. The film stars Nanako Matsushima, Miki Nakatani, and Hiroyuki Sanada, and follows a reporter who is racing to investigate the mystery behind a cursed video tape; whoever watches the tape dies seven days after doing so. The film is also titled The Ring (stylized as the Ring) in Japan and was released in North America as Ringu.

Production took approximately nine months, and the film was shot back-to-back with a sequel, Spiral, featuring much of the same cast but involving neither Nakata nor Takahashi; both films were released together in Japan on January 31, 1998, with the studio hoping for the popularity of the novel to make both films successful.

Jay McRoy reads the ending hopefully: if the characters therapeutically understand their conflicts, they can live on. as well as to the view of the ring of light seen from the bottom of the well where Sadako's body was left to decompose.

Production

After the moderate success of the 1991 novel Ring by Koji Suzuki, Kadokawa Shoten decided to adapt it into a motion picture.

Screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi and director Hideo Nakata collaborated to work on the script after reading Suzuki's novel and watching Fuji Television's 1995 made-for-TV film, directed by Chisui Takigawa. The broadcast version of the 1995 film was re-edited and released on home video under a new title, Ring: Kanzenban ( "Ring: The Complete Edition";

The special effects on the cursed video tape and some parts in the film were shot on a 35 mm film which was passed on to a laboratory in which a computer added a "grainy" effect. The film was shown at the 1999 Fantasia Film Festival where it won the first place award for Best Feature in the Asian films section.

In the Philippines, the film was given limited releases as Ring: Circle of Evil on both December 4, 2002, and January 11, 2003, to coincide with the North American remake's release on January 17.

Box office

In Japan, the film earned a distribution income (rentals) of in 1998, making it one of the top ten highest-grossing Japanese films of the year. The film grossed a total Japanese box office revenue of ().

Variety stated that Rings "most notable success" has been in Hong Kong, where it became the biggest grosser during the first half of the year, beating popular American films such as The Matrix. On its 1999 Hong Kong release, Ring earned (US$4.03 million) during its two-month theatrical run making it Hong Kong's highest-grossing Japanese-language film. This record was later beaten by Stand By Me Doraemon in 2015. ().

In France, the film sold 94,257 tickets, equivalent to an estimated gross revenue of approximately (). In South Korea, 56,983 tickets were sold in the capital city of Seoul, equivalent to an estimated gross revenue of approximately ().

Home media

Ring was released directly to home video in the United States and Canada by DreamWorks with English, Spanish, and French subtitles on March 4, 2003, under the transliterated title Ringu.

In the United Kingdom, it was watched by 390,000 viewers on television during the first half of 2005, making it the sixth most-watched foreign-language film on UK television during that period. Ring 2 also drew 360,000 viewers on UK television during the same period, adding up to a combined 750,000 UK television viewership for both Ring films during the first half of 2005.

To coincide with its 20th anniversary, Arrow Films under their Arrow Video imprint issued a Blu-ray Disc of Ring on March 18, 2019, in the UK and Ireland. Additionally, a Blu-ray box set featuring Ring, the sequels Spiral and Ring 2, and prequel Ring 0, was also released. The transfer features a 4K resolution restoration that was scanned from the film's original camera negative. The picture grading and restoration, which took place at Imagica Labs in Tokyo, was supervised and approved by Ring cinematographer Jun'ichirō Hayashi. Both Arrow's single Blu-ray Disc and Blu-ray box set were later released in the United States and Canada on October 29, again under the transliterated title Ringu.

Reception

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 98% based on 43 reviews, with a weighted average of 7.5 out of 10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Ringu combines supernatural elements with anxieties about modern technology in a truly frightening and unnerving way".

Sight & Sound critic Mark Kermode praised the film's "timeless terror", with its "combination of old folk devils and contemporary moral panics" which appeal to both teen and adult audiences alike. Kermode emphasizes that "one is inclined to conclude that it is the telling, rather than the content of the tale, that is all-important". Ring was listed as the twelfth best horror film of all time by The Guardian and also picked by Stuart Heritage in the same paper as the film that frightened him most.

Ring was ranked No. 69 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films of World Cinema" in 2010. In the early 2010s, Time Out conducted a poll with several authors, directors, actors and critics who have worked within the horror genre to vote for their top horror films. Ring placed at number 61 on their top 100 list.

Influence

The international success of the Japanese films launched a revival of horror film making in Japan that resulted in such pictures as Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 film Pulse (known as in Japan), Takashi Shimizu's (2000), Hideo Nakata's , also based on a short story by Suzuki), and Higuchinsky's Uzumaki (2000, a.k.a. Vortex, based on the Junji Ito horror manga of the same name).

Influence on Western cinema

Ring had some influence on Western cinema and gained cult status in the West. Ring, whose release in Japan roughly coincided with The Blair Witch Project in the United States, helped to revitalize the genre by taking a more restrained approach to horror, leaving much of the terror to the audience's imagination. In addition to Japanese productions this boom also managed to bring attention to similar films made in East Asia at the same time such as A Tale of Two Sisters from South Korea and The Eye from Hong Kong.

All of these films were later remade in English. Released in 2002, The Ring reached number 1 at the box office and grossed slightly more in Japan than the original. The original Ring grossed in 1998,

Sequels and remakes

The original sequel was Spiral, released in 1998, but due to its poor reception, a new sequel, Ring 2, was released in 1999 which continued the story line of this film. It was followed by a 2000 prequel, Ring 0: Birthday, followed by Sadako in 2019. Spiral in turn was followed by Sadako 3D in 2012 and Sadako 3D 2 in 2013. Another installment, Sadako DX, was released in 2022.

A television series, Ring: The Final Chapter, was made, with a similar storyline but many changes in characters and their backstories. A South Korean remake The Ring Virus was made in 1999, as well as an American remake, The Ring, in 2002.

References

Works cited

External links

Snowblood Apple's Ring Cycle article, an overview of all Ring films.