Ring (film)

 Ring (film)

·       Introduction

Ring (リング Ringu) could also be a 1998 Japanese horror film directed by Hideo Nakata, supported the 1991 novel by Kôji Suzuki. The film stars Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada and Rikiya Ōtaka, and follows a newsperson WHO is on the run to research the mystery behind a cursed videotape that kills the viewer 7 days after watching it.

Production took some nine months. Ring and its sequel Rasen were discharged in Japan at identical time. After its unleash, Ring was a huge box office success in Japan and was critically 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.

• Themes

Critics have mentioned Ring’s preoccupations with Japanese tradition’s collision with modernism. Colette Balmain identifies, “In the figure of Sadako, Ring [utilises the] vengeful yūrei archetype of conventional Japanese horror”. She argues how this traditional Japanese figure is expressed via a videotape which “embodies contemporary anxieties, in that it is technology through which the repressed past reasserts itself”.

Ruth cartoonist argues that Ring expresses "ambivalence regarding motherhood”. She reads Reiko as a mother WHO – thanks to the new potential for women’s independence – neglects her 'natural' role as martyred wife in pursuit of associate degree freelance identity, subsequently neglecting her child. Goldberg identifies a doubling effect whereby the unconscious conflicts of Reiko’s family are expressed via the supernatural in the other family under Reiko’s investigation.

Jay McRoy reads the ending hopefully: if the characters therapeutically understand their conflicts, they can live on. Balmain, however, is not optimistic; she reads the replication of the video as technology spreading, virus-like, throughout Japan.

• Cast

Nanako Matsushima as Reiko Asakawa, a journalist WHO investigates her niece's death and finds the cursed videotape.

Hiroyuki Sanada as Ryūji Takayama, Reiko's ex, a former pupil turned university academic. He features a degree of intuition that detects supernatural auras.

Rikiya Ōtaka as Yōichi Asakawa, Reiko's young son WHO conjointly includes a intuition like his father.

Miki Nakatani as Mai Takano, Ryuji's student.

Yūko Takeuchi as Tomoko Ōishi, Reiko's kinswoman WHO watches the cursed videotape and is amongst its initial victims.

Hitomi Satō as Masami Kurahashi, Tomoko's best friend.

Daisuke Ban as Dr. Heihachiro Ikuma, Sadako's father WHO threw her down a well.

Rie Inō as Sadako Yamamura, the antagonist of the film. A girl with psychic powers United Nations agency was thrown down a well wherever she died, but her spirit lived on within a videotape.

Masako as Shizuko Yamamura, Sadako's mother. She too had psychic powers however a fateful press demonstration diode to her suicide.

Yōichi Numata as Takashi Yamamura, Sadako's uncle who runs an inn on Oshima Island.

Yutaka Matsushige as Yoshino, a journalist associate of Reiko.

Katsumi Muramatsu as Kōichi Asakawa, Reiko's father.

• Production

After the moderate success of the Ring novel, written by Kōji Suzuki and published in 1991, publisher Kadokawa Shoten decided to make a motion picture adaptation of Ring.

Screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi and director Hideo Nakata collaborated to figure on the script when reading Suzuki's novel and look Ring: Kanzenban, Fuji Television Network's 1995 made-for-TV film, directed by Chisui Takigawa. but, the TV version was re-edited and released on VHS under a new title, Ring: Kanzenban (Ring: The Complete Edition). Nakata did not state which TV version he and Takahashi watched.

In their film script, Takashi and Nakata changed the protagonist's gender (from male to female), name (from Kazuyuki Asakawa to Reiko Asakawa), marital status (from married to divorced) and child's gender and name (from daughter Yoko to son Yoichi).

• Release

Ring was discharged in Japan on Jan thirty one, 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.

• Reception

The review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes gives the film an approval rating of 97 percent based on 38 reviews, and a weighted average of 7.58 out of 10. The website's "Critics Consensus" is that the film "combines supernatural parts with anxieties regarding fashionable technology in a very really horrifying and redoubtable means."

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. whereas Smith of Empire on-line finds the film "throttled by its over quality, pudding plotting and a definite lack of actual action," Kermode emphasizes that "one is inclined to conclude that it is the telling, rather than the content of the tale, that is all-important." Variety agrees that the slow pace, with "its gradual evocation of evil lying await below the surface of normality," is one in all the film's biggest strengths. Ring has been represented because the most horrifying film of all time by Peter Bradshaw, The Guardian's film critic. Ring is also listed as the twelfth best horror film of all time by The Guardian.[19]

Tweet