A certain well Being. (Ring (DVD))

Member Name: peel.rebekah

Product:	Ring (DVD)
Date:	02/12/01 (341 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Eyeballs.

Disadvantages: You will be dead seven days after reading this op.

The terminology 'ghost story' is not one that sits well with modern Western horror movies; we seem to have lost that subtle tender touch of fright and replaced it with a large bludgeoning hammer. I find that a real shame - I must admit to reveling in a jolly rollicking slash/gore fest teenage massacre now and then, yet gone are those beautiful and serene days of frosted hairs slowly rising on your neck, nervous glances to the peephole through the curtains into the darkened outside, and what lurks in that unseen space just behind your left shoulder.

I'm racking my brains because I want to make a slightly different comparison, but no, there is only one other film I have seen that conjures up the same tender icicles of anxiety, and that is the original The Haunting (1963, Robert Wise); a stunning and subtle assault on all of the viewer's taut tenses, while never, EVER giving anything else away.

Ring also holds the reins of fright tight, taking the viewer very gently by the hand and leading them deep into the woods:

*The Film.

A couple of schoolgirls are telling tales and trying to scare the other witless; one recounts the story of a group of teenagers who happen upon a video and decide to watch it. Minutes after watching it, the group receive a phone call informing them that they'll be dead within seven days...The other schoolgirl bends the story by reacting with such fear, and claiming that she was one of the teenagers in question...but no, that's only a joke as well...or is it?

As the phone rings, her petrified friend pleads to know whether she is telling the truth or not...she nods, her friend flees, and the finality of the seventh day arrives in the form of a death mask of terror.

The story circulates and the viewer is not so sure of where they are in the film; is this a supernatural reality, or a modern myth? The same trap occurs for a young reporter, Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima), w
ho is intrigued enough by the curiousness of it all to begin interviewing schoolchildren about the story.

And then Reiko discovers that her own niece appears to have been a victim of this urban fable.

And so, rather unwisely (but then where would the horror genre be without outgoing, gung-ho females?), Reiko tracks down the video cassette...and then watches it.

And then the phone rings.

Frantic with the horror of it all - the certainty that in seven days she will be no more is made all the more intense by her single mother status - she contacts her ex and begs him to help her unravel the history behind the myth, the video and the curse.

*The Acting...

Is hard to classify or clarify: This is a VERY Japanese movie with a hell of a lot of Japanese references and cultural nods...it's kind of hard to have a reference point for the acting, yet I can say that the characters were slightly more inflamed and human than a Manga.

Matsushima has a natural grace and beauty that turns its hand well to a gentle hysteria; If I have to make a comment on the acting, then let it be this: The acting in Ring is about displaying terror in an agile fashion, while letting it linger and become contagious. This Matsushima does romantically and with warmth. She fuels her own demise in the same way as a Voodoo curse would be played out: The victim very much the hostage of their own imagination.

I don't have too much to say about the other characters - there are scenes in which their performances are stunning, yet I feel this is a culmination of theatrical set design, camera work and colour - all of which compliment the players dialogue and anxious faces.

*The Direction

The West has its heavy Gothic classics - we are all aware when references are being made in modern movies to Bram Stoker this or Victor Frankenstein that - and so the East has its own equally important works that inform films such as
Ring. While die hard fans of Japanese ghost stories and Manga fantasies may be well versed in all the pointers and implications, I must admit to remaining well and truely in the dark.

I am told that Ring is very reminiscent of Japanese Fisherman's supernatural tales; One thing I find truely beautiful and wonderfully frightening is the way the Japanese seem to equate ghosts with madness - a faint idea that seems to have existed in our past (just think of mad, wailing banshees) but has since been left by the wayside.

All this is me just twittering on. What is important is that Hideo Nakata made this film, and that even without knowledge of the aforementioned references, a Western viewer can enjoy this film to the hilt: He has made a deeply, utterly Japanese film that smoothers itself in images that we somehow recognise...I'm thinking of school uniforms and Pokemon here, so nothing too highbrow...while still able to pull in an American buyer for the rights for a remake...ARRRRRGH.

The texture of the film begins rather roughly, a bit like cheap toilet paper, but this only helps when the tone turns gothicly velveteen later on. These changes are echoed by the video within the movie: A series of seemingly unconnected apparitions that appear to be impossibly filmed and intrinsically linked.

The same ideas of shift are apparent when the film travels in and out of the countryside - in and out of history, and in and out of what is reality.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: All the best (as in most effective) horror movies tempt us with the terror - they don't flaunt it and all its innards in our face - Ring is such a delightful example of this, building us up in a truely theatrical fashion to a culmination of horror - only then not to show us - making us feel hard done by - and then SCHBLAMMO, an idea and an image that shake our foundations and make our little hearts beat themselves out of time.
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br>I'd love to spoil it all for you and give the game away big time...I'm soooo damn tempted to rattle on for a paragraph or two about the final scene...but no, I'm not that cruel, and the watching of it is really what makes this film the total beauty that it is.

*Conclusion.

I'm waiting for Ring 2 to be released over here with baited breath (damn Pete Love to hell), and apparently it's part of a trilogy (based on the books by Susuki Koji), so I'll be hankering for the prequel too...for any of you hooked, there is also a two volume manga set to be had.

If you're a horror fan of any description, then this film deserves a viewing. True, it has a slow and subtle story, and yes, you'll have to follow the subtitles closely, but believe me, this is not one to be missed.

Honest, guv.

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