Ringu

Hideo Nakata’s Ringu is an effectively creepy horror film, which well deserves its cult reputation. The power of the film comes from its minimalism and restraint, as well as the fact that we the viewers get to see the (strange, disjunctive, and oddly haunting) video that kills anyone who watches it. The film’s double ending – an apparent resolution, followed by a twist in which the danger is still active – is in itself a genre cliche, but both “endings” are emotionally resonant. The corpse’s emergence from the well is quite beautiful. The overall theme of electronic media as vectors of contamination is also poetically apt (and it seems to be in the air right now: a similar scenario, of a video that kills whoever watches it, can be found in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest; the same theme, only with a song instead of a video, is the basis of Chuck Palahnuik’s Lullaby. But the particular twist of Ringu, which I won’t mention here in order not to ruin the experience for anyone reading this who hasn’t seen it yet, has a special resonance).

Hideo Nakata’s Ringu is an effectively creepy horror film, which well deserves its cult reputation. The power of the film comes from its minimalism and restraint, as well as the fact that we the viewers get to see the (strange, disjunctive, and oddly haunting) video that kills anyone who watches it. The film’s double ending – an apparent resolution, followed by a twist in which the danger is still active – is in itself a genre cliche, but both “endings” are emotionally resonant. The corpse’s emergence from the well is quite beautiful. The overall theme of electronic media as vectors of contamination is also poetically apt (and it seems to be in the air right now: a similar scenario, of a video that kills whoever watches it, can be found in David Foster Wallace’s Infinite Jest; the same theme, only with a song instead of a video, is the basis of Chuck Palahnuik’s Lullaby. But the particular twist of Ringu, which I won’t mention here in order not to ruin the experience for anyone reading this who hasn’t seen it yet, has a special resonance).

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