Ringu
Article by Jonno Blood
9月26日火曜日
As rewind counts the days until their annual Horrorfest, a Japanese classic has dragged its misshapen body into the set list.
J-Horror aficionados will instantly recognise the name Ringu (not to be confused with ringo the Japanese word for apple) as Hideo Nakata’s 1998 ancestor of the 2002 Hollywood horror The Ring.
Yes, four years 'before Naomi Watts fumbled around chasing horses and lighthouses to the music of Hans Zimmerman a much cheaper production nailed the jump-scares and Cousin It hairdos.
Both movies centre on an urban myth about a video, which if you watch you will receive a phone call and die in seven days, with a tortured expression on your mug. The aunty of the opening scene victim investigates the story, watching the video herself in the process. Now cursed herself, she must work against time to break the hex, aided by her psychic ex-partner who lamentably also watches the video.
The Japanese original hits the mark with a much subtler physiological horror that the subtitles and gender-exaggerated performances seem to only enhance with a sense of the alien, the other. Where the Hollywood version’s video cobbles together a random collection of horror stock footage – maggots, a centipede, a nail piercing a finger – to be awkwardly shoehorned into the plot, Ringu’s video is a sinister cluster of escape room clues.
The protagonists, Reiko (Nanako Matsushima) and ex-hubby Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada) are guided by the video. The seemingly random fragments of footage provide elusions to newspaper articles and names, and regional idioms that speak of locations – Frolic in brine, goblins be thine. Add to this Takayama’s touch of the shining which allows psychic insights that help to fast forward the somewhat elliptical plot.
Based on Koji Suzuki's 1991 novel of the same name and drawing deeply from the well of Japanese folk-horror stories, kaidan, Ringu builds slowly a sense of intangible dread, which for my money grinds deeper into the fear-glands than the frantic Hollywood formulas.
Ringu’s homage to half-millennia old kaidan stories is evident in its conjuring of traditional Yurei ghost appearance – white clothing, disjointed bodies, and of course long dishevelled black hair. There are particular similarities to the story of Nagai Kurokami, in which O-fuku, a belle with beautiful long black hair is horribly burned after passing out near a brazier flame after a big night on the sake. Bald of skin she dies of her wounds, only to return with her long black hair restored, slick and plastered to her face, to torment her friends for seven days.
A kaidan more commonly cited when people get deep about Ringu is the story of Banshu Sarayashiki. A dishwashing servant, Okiku, is framed for losing one of ten treasured plates by a jilted admirer. She is subsequently tortured and thrown into the well of Himeji Castle. The legend goes that she would emerge from the well at night, counting the plates one to nine. Those who heard her would fall ill, and when she reached ten, she would scream with such nihilistic anguish that those listening would die of dread.
In Ringu, a retro-modern Okiku rises from the well to count days not plates. Once free of the well also escapes the celluloid to slay the viewer.
The story of Okiku is so entangled with Japanese tradition that almost two centuries ago that famous Japanese wave print artist, Hokusai created a print of Okiku, sliding from the well, limbless, lank black hair plastered to her face, eyes upturned. She sure does look familiar.
In film, the motif of a woman with slick black hair over her face has been around at least since Masaki Kobayashi's 1965 anthology Kwaidan and the trope lingers in The Grudge, with its creepy creaking door whispers, and Sion Sono’s Exte. But there’s something of the archetypal about Ringu.
Ringu is kaidan meets Tobe Hooper’s 1982 classic Poltergeist. It’s deliciously low on cringe and doesn't try too hard at creating a modern imagining of ancient fear. The silent scream of Noh theatre trumps the sorority scream of western slasher films.
Maybe, as a Pokémon-card carrying Japophile, I’m biased. But for me comparing Ringu with the remake is like trading Wagyu for Whoppers. Ringu is far more cleverly assembled, there’s not the clumsily unrelated horror brain-farts of its American nephew. It sticks to plot and the premises more convincingly. Despite the mirrored story line, contrastng the two is somehow not comparing apples with apples (ringos with ringos.).
Nanako Matsushima and Hiroyuki Sanada build engaging characters, ratcheting the tension artfully with just enough of a hint of interpersonal conflict to fend off the cliche. Many will recognise Sanada from pretty much any Hollywood movie that requires a Japanese male, including The Last Samurai, 47 Ronin, Minamata, Mortal Kombat, Bullet Train, and his apex: the voice of Dumo the Sumo in Minions.
Nanako Matsushima went on to star in a commercial for Uber Eats.
So, as we count down to our annual ghost fraternising festival, Halloween, let your hair down, grab a drink, turn off your phone and watch the screen.
VHS & dial phones may have gone the way of a pretty girl in a slasher opening scene, but Ringu is timeless horror, perfect for popcorn and Candycorn.
Be quick to grab a ticket at link .
The days are running out.