Ringu

a.k.a. "The Ring", Hideo Nakata, 1998

First of all, if you haven't watched this nor the American "The Ring" (2002), please 1. don't read plot spoilers (there are none here) and 2. don't watch the American one but this one instead. There is no other way to describe it accurately except that the Americans took a pure masterpiece and it's popularity and turned it into a meaningless nothing. The fact that upon its release this film became the highest grossing film in Japan should be seen as a hint for its appeal.

This is the horror film that sent me, a blood-stained horror film veteran, to nights and months of scary imagery. As the veteran I am, I just casually watched it alone at 1 a.m. with my then-girlfriend sleeping next to me. I was left unsettled and scared to go to sleep; but much more: the unimaginably effective audio and imagery in the film just carried on in my mind for a long time. I had to watch it a couple of times again to better be able to deal with it.

The film relies on plot (of which I will reveal nothing here) and very fine use of color, sound and direction. There's no blood or gore, no knife-wielding maniacs, no "cheap spooks", no computer special effects, just something very original and a result that you don't want your young children to watch. I was simply left in awe after seeing the film admiring how well it is actually built... this is something a B-movie director can''t achieve by just throwing in scary looking monsters, blood, torture, loud spooks etc. but requires a real artist just to direct, and I urge any people to watch it who generally classify horror films as B-films. The film uses a somewhat similar and very unsettling metallic sound approach I heard before on The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (which was actually rather rock-drill sounding).

A part of the appeal of this film for me was my former unfamiliarity with Japanese horror in general, which I have learned to have quite a different tradition from us. But you can simply forget about the sequels for this film (I had to check just to be sure) or any of the American boom. "Ju-On" ("The Grudge", Takashi Shimizu, 2002) borrows quite a lot from the imagery from this film in an effective manner, but I didn't find it half the killer this film was to me.

About horror films in general please read my post on "Suspiria".