View Larger Image

Ringu Director: Hideo Nakata Number of Items: 1 Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen Format: Color, Widescreen, Dolby Audience Rating: Unrated Running Time: 100 minutes Studio: Universal Studios Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1 Region Code: 1 Product Group: DVD Release Date: 2003-03-04 Buy from Amazon

Customer Reviews: Total numer of reviews: 170 Average rating: 4.0 "Made for television" I'm not one of those people who can't enjoy a movie without special effects. In fact, I tend to prefer movies without special effects. I live in Japan and am a big fan of Japanese underground films. Now that I got that out of the way, let me tell you that this movie is not scary, not well acted (yes, I watched it in Japanese), and overall, very poorly made. The supposedly scary scenes use cheesy horror tricks to try and scare you and it just doesn't work. "The tape" is really short, and lacks the artistic edge of the tape in "The Ring". I've seen animations that were more unsettling. The story (what there is of it) progresses too quickly and the elements within that were omitted from "The Ring" were omitted for very good reasons. The only reason I gave it two stars is that maybe, just maybe, if I had not seen "The Ring" first I might have been mildy interested in this conveluted soup of a film. MAYBE. Bottom line, not worth your time. "Definitely B-Grade" * At the beginning of RINGU, a Japanese live-action thriller-horror film, a group of students who watch a strange videotape while visiting a resort all die abruptly a week later. They are physically unharmed but died with a look of fear and horror on their faces. A young reporter investigating the incident acquires the tape and watches it herself, only to become convinced that she is similarly doomed and has only a week to live. Together with her ex-husband, a university professor, she sets out on a quest to unravel the mystery of the cursed videotape. I am not a big horror movie fan but I like Japanese movies, so I was more interested in RINGU than its American remake, THE RING. However, on watching RINGU I have to say that it is not a particularly impressive movie. It was clearly made on a budget, which is not necessarily bad in itself, but the acting is also strictly B-grade and not very convincing. To be sure, weak acting is sort of a trademark of run-of-the-mill horror flics, but to inspire terror the actors have to convince the viewer that they are actually terrified, and if they can't do this when the viewer is willing to suspend disbelief the movie's got a problem. RINGU is more slow than frightening. I would place it somewhere in between the low-end made-for-TV movies on SCI-FI CHANNEL and higher-end made-for-TV movies made for the more mainstream cable channels. RINGU can be watched in sort of an automatic fashion -- it is, incidentally, not a blood-and-gore film -- but it won't disturb your sleep. I hear the acting in THE RING is actually pretty hair-raising, but like I said I'm not a horror fan and I doubt I'll check it out any time soon. "It was ok" I watched both movies The Ring and Ringu within the same weekend. My personal choice for which one is better is The Ring, I do however give credit to Ringu for the orginal idea, but I feel The Ring had better graphics. Also The Ring was alot more suspenseful, because they made the cottage very creepy, in ringu it looks all nice. That kind of ruins the whole mood. The whole movie I thought was better anyways. Naomi Watts was brilliant, as was also Daveigh Chase. She portrayed Samara magically, the character was perfect! "Scary and atmospheric film" This movie really creeped me out, and i'm pretty uncreep-outable! A slow burning thriller than does not let up in atmosphere and builds to a stunning conclusion. Hollywood have remade this one but you can't beat the original. "Good Scary Movie" Definetly a fantastic thriller/horror movie. I mean this movie is just straight up interesting. Even though it's kinda slow it's still excelent. Better yet when all 3 are watched, you get the full idea of whats happening and how it happened. Watch it!!!