Will Sorg – Entertainment Columnist

The Ring, directed by Gore Verbinksi, is one of the most successful horror movies ever made. The film dominated the box office and became a cultural landmark, with countless references and parodies of haunting, long haired girls climbing out of televisions invading every moment of the 2000s. However this film was not the original. Four years prior, Japanese audiences were terrified by Ringu, the film that The Ring is based on. 

A seminal 90s horror film directed by Hideo Nakata, Ringu follows an investigative journalist as she seeks to uncover the truth behind a string of mysterious deaths. After the death of her niece, the journalist Reiko Asakawa uncovers a cursed VHS tape that contains a series of cryptic imagery accompanied by horrible screeching and ending with a water well in the woods. Following the tape, a phone rings, and Reiko hears the same screech that came from the tape. The rest of the film follows Reiko and her ex-husband as they attempt to stop the curse that will kill them in seven days. 

A pervasive anxiety over the unknowns of the modern world is evoked throughout the film. In the 1990s, Japan experienced an economic recession that inspired many Japanese filmmakers to reflect the anxieties of the country. Technology in Ringu is an ever present source of anxiety. The grainy VHS footage brings dread and doom as its low detail creates gaps in images that allows the audience to use their own imagination, creating more paranoia and tension. It is deeply significant that the ghost haunts technology.

There is a clear method to the rules of the ghost. Each detail, especially early on, is told through the words of teenagers who see the curse as a fun urban legend. The curse is not just literal: it is a thought virus, spreading throughout the characters minds, compelling them to look deeper and bring themselves closer to their doom. Like internet trends, the ghost Sadako is spread through a near unavoidable cultural dominance. Teenagers share the curse with each other; Rieko shows her ex-husband the tape  out of an obsessive need to find out more about it. Even Rieko’s young son discovers the tape, a clear parallel to the common anxiety of parents surrounding what their children are exposed to via the internet. The ever-present fear of modernity builds a sense of pure dread that is juxtaposed with the antiquated, fantastical, supernatural elements of the film. 

Part of what makes this juxtaposition work so well is the pace of the film. The film takes place over a little more than a week, with title cards marking the passage of time. Each day shown in the film leads to a small new discovery for the characters. Not every day is marked with supernatural events, but each is filled with the growing tension that something is coming for the characters. As the time left grows shorter and shorter the characters’ paranoia reaches their peak as the past haunts the present and it is unclear if anyone is able to avoid the terrible fate of the curse.