Ring (1998)

The Ocean Rages

Why do Japanese horror movies involve girls with creepy black hair near watery places? Let me tell you!

Japan’s 1998 Ring (Ringu) film, directed by Hideo Nakata, based on the 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki, follows the story of a reporter chasing the mystery of a cursed videotape that kills it’s viewers 7 days after they view it.

Ring utilizes the vengeful Japanese yūrei archetype. These are spirits who are barred from a peaceful afterlife.

In traditional Japanese beliefs, every person has a soul or spirit called a reikon. When you die your reikon enters purgatory to wait, while your loved ones perform your funeral and post funeral rites. If the rites aren’t performed, or a person died in a violent way, or was holding on to some strong emotion in death, like revenge or jealousy, the reikon transforms into a yūrei.

The yurei will persist in haunting on Earth until the proper funeral rites are performed, or their internal conflict resolves the strong emotion that attached itself on the physical plane.

Through a couple centuries of art work the yurei has taken on a uniform of sorts: white clothing due to that being traditional funeral attire for the dead, long black hair as women wore their hair down for burial, lifeless dangling hands and sometimes a lack of feet or you never see the feet, and often depicted with twin floating ghostly flames beside them.

Beyond this there are many types of yurei whose form depends on how or why they died. Plus the living can also manifest a “living ghost” to haunt you with their rage or jealousy.

It is a rabbit hole of phantom categories and a gold mine for the horror writer.

The Ring franchise includes eight Japanese films, two television series, six manga adaptations, three American film remakes, a Korean film remake, and two video games; The Ring: Terror's Realm and Ring: Infinity.

Ring has a minimalist creep that many bigger budget recent horror films don’t contain. Filmmakers are increasingly pressured by an impatient modern audience that asks for more, when they actually crave “less” in better stories.

This film blows most of the American remakes away, The slow simmer and resolute reluctance to give you want you want builds tension but even though Ring is disturbing, it is not without it’s flaws, including a sometimes confusing plot progression. And although the technology seems archaic now, Ring is part of our ongoing conversation on technology and how it controls us. This is low budget horror at it’s most subtle and simple.

Not a perfect movie but the 5 star atmosphere is undeniable.