Judged on plot alone, Nakata Hideo’s Ring ought to be pretty tame. Indeed, this uniquely compelling cinematic work often comes across, on first description of the story, as a piece of over-the-top Japanese kitsch. The story of a cursed videotape that kills the viewer within seven days ought not to be this scary. Yet it has chilled and awed mainstream Western audiences, and almost single-handedly brought about our current obsession with Japanese horror. Arguably, it has paved the way to mainstream success in the West for the likes of Takashi Miike and others. The point is that the art of terror revolves around context. That old campfire chestnut in which a ghost hunts down the liver stolen by a schoolboy from his now uninhabited corpse looks ridiculous on paper.(read more...)
