Ring

Ring (1998) starts with a video tape. Anyone who watches it dies a week later. A journalist investigating her niece's death finds the tape, watches it, and the countdown starts for her. The fear is not in the images but in the rule. Death arrives on a fixed date, the character knows it, and the film builds that week as an investigation. The tension comes out of waiting. The source is Koji Suzuki's novel. Hideo Nakata directed. It was an extraordinary hit in Japan and is taken as the beginning of Japanese horror's international recognition, followed by a wave including Ju-On, Dark Water and Pulse. The image emerging from the television is the film's signature. Most of its effect comes from movement played in reverse: the performer walked backwards and the footage was flipped, producing motion that is unnatural without being identifiable. It was remade in America by Gore Verbinski as The Ring in 2002, and that film's success at the American box office started a wave of Japanese horror remakes. It runs 96 minutes. Good for: horror that builds slowly, investigative structure, and Japanese cinema. Less good for: there is almost no gore; for anyone wanting graphic horror the film stays quiet. The image quality shows the budget. The tape's rules shift across the film and the logic is not tight.