Taglines: Will scare the hell out of you!
Ring movie storyline. Reiko Asakawa is researching into a ‘Cursed Video’ interviewing teenagers about it. When her niece Tomoko dies of ‘sudden heart failure’ with an unnaturally horrified expression on her face, Reiko investigates. She finds out that some of Tomoko’s friends, who had been on a holiday with Tomoko the week before, had died on exactly the same night at the exact same time in the exact same way.
Reiko goes to the cabin where the teens had stayed and finds an ‘unlabeled’ video tape. Reiko watched the tape to discover to her horror it is in fact the ‘cursed videotape’. Ex-Husband Ryuji helps Reiko solve the mystery, Reiko makes him a copy for further investigation. Things become more tense when their son Yoichi watches the tape saying Tomoko had told him to. Their discovery takes them to a volcanic island where they discover that the video has a connection to a psychic who died 30 years ago, and her child Sadako…
Ring (Japanese: Ringu) is a 1998 Japanese psychological horror film directed by Hideo Nakata, adapted from the novel Ring by Kôji Suzuki, which in turn draws on the Japanese folk tale Banchō Sarayashiki. The film stars Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Rikiya Ōtaka. The film is centered around a reporter who is on the run to investigate the mystery behind a cursed videotape that kills the viewer 7 days after watching it.
Production took approximately 9 months. Ring and its sequel Rasen were released in Japan at the same time. After its release, Ring was huge box office success in Japan and acclaimed by critics. It inspired numerous follow-ups within the Ring franchise and triggered a trend of Western remakes, starting with the 2002 American film The Ring.
Ring was released in Japan on January 31, 1998 where it was distributed by Toho. Upon release in Japan, Ring became the highest grossing horror film in the country. 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.
Variety stated that Ring’s “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 HK$31.2 million (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.
The international success of the Japanese films launched a revival of horror filmmaking in Japan that resulted in such pictures as Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s 2001 film Pulse (known as Circuit (Kairo) in Japan), Takashi Shimizu’s The Grudge (Juon) (2000), Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water (Honogurai mizu no soko kara, literally From the Depths of Dark Water), also based on a short story by Suzuki), and Higuchinsky’s Uzumaki (2000, aka Vortex, based on the Junji Itō horror manga of the same name).
Ring – Ringu (1998)
Directed by: Hideo Nakata
Starring: Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Rikiya Ōtaka, Yoichi Numata, Hitomi Satô, Yutaka Matsushige, Katsumi Muramatsu, Hiroshi Sakuma, Kiriko Shimizu
Screenplay by: Hiroshi Takahashi
Production Design by: Iwao Saitô
Cinematography by: Jun’ichirô Hayashi
Film Editing by: Nobuyuki Takahashi
Makeup Department: Yûichi Matsui, Takuya Wada
Music by: Kenji Kawai
Distributed by: Toho
Release Date: January 31, 1998 (Japan)
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