Wonderfully offbeat film!

This Movie Can Only Be Described With One Word.

There are moments that feel comical, some horrific, and some downright inspiring but the tonal shifts hardly matter as the end results come to a film that's perfect for this time.

Unshakable, witty and deeply felt, the film will be paying emotional dividends for a long, long time.

If you think this film is going to answer all the questions about how Sadako acquired supernatural viral video production powers, it won't. It just adds more questions. It's not like a Marvel universe "origin story"! But suppose you never saw "Ringu" and came to this cold and just flowed with it, I think you would be impressed by the spine-tingliness of it all. At any moment something creepy and unexpected may happen, and generally speaking these are not clichés like cats jumping out at you or a monster suddenly attacking. They may just be things like, say, a flower falling off its stem for no reason.Throughout, the film conveys the idea that no matter how weird and dangerous you think things are, you really still have no idea. A train is coming at you, but then you realize that there aren't any tracks and it can go where it wants, and even stop acting like a train.Ayn Rand (I'm not a disciple btw) wrote something to the effect that the distinguishing feature of horror films (and what, in her opinion, made them evil and repellent) is that they convey the picture of a universe that is hostile and incomprehensible, not subject to prediction or manipulation by human intelligence. I don't think the universe really is that way, but I don't think it's evil to produce a fantasy film that shows you that kind of version of the universe for an hour and a half - as this movie effectively does.That's the really scary thing in my view. It's bad enough to have really dangerous entities going around, but it mitigates the badness if you can learn about them and then avoid them or defeat them. If Dracula is in the neighborhood, stock up on mirrors and crucifixes and summon Van Helsing! But if Sadako is in the neighborhood, you are in deep trouble. Knowing about her may have been your fatal mistake, or misfortune.

I found this to be an excellent movie. First of all, this movie is really terrifying. This movie might even be almost as scary as the original ringu. There were a few interesting scares during the second half of the movie and there were a few jumpy scenes as well. There were more scares in this movie than the original ringu, though as a whole this movie isn't as scary as the original. The ending for this movie was a very sad and scary one. Basically, this movie explains why Sadako ended up being thrown in the well. This movie is electrifying, and is interesting that some of the scary scenes took place in the forest. There was one scene where Sadako seem to even twist her own body. I thought that was terrifying and rather unique. This movie starts of being very interesting for the first twenty minutes, then continues with some long draggy and boring dialogs showing how Sadako and the other man build up their relationship slowly. The scenes that took place in the theatre just got draggy after the first twenty minutes. However, let the show take a little while to grab you. Halfway during the movie, it grabbed me, and I could not stop watching this film. This film is both electrifying and relatively sad. Another major complain I have about this film is that very much like ringu, the scariest scenes in this film take place entirely during the day and not at night. This eases out a lot of tension and fear when I watch the movie. Other than that, this movie has an interesting storyline, an interesting idea, a relatively touching film. This film is recommended. Score: 8/10

This review has serious spoilers. I'm unsure exactly how to rate this film, since I'm not sure if the things that confused me when I watched it were due to bad writing or a failure on my part. None of the other reviews seem to mention the things I'm referring to, probably because they're impossible discuss without giving away major plot twists. So I'm going to give away the major plot twists. Don't read the rest of this review if you don't want to know them.First I'll talk about the stuff I did get. The direction is true to the original (the director is different, but you'd never know without reading the credits). It's also truly amazing. Scenes that on paper would seem old-hat really get the heart pounding, thanks to the excellent way they are portrayed. Lighting, camera angles, music, and other tools are used to terrific effect. Another thing I like is how several shots of the normal human Sadako seem to foreshadow her appearance as a specter with face-obscuring hair in "Ringu." The depiction of the dream of the well is less successful in my opinion. There is some filter added to the footage to make it look washed-out (to look like the killer videotape, I guess), and I find it annoying. It's much more annoying later on when the same filter is used in shots of waking reality for no apparent reason. But for the most part, the visual aspect of the film is fantastic.The storytelling is also fine. I realized as the film was reaching its one quarter mark that a huge amount has been shown and told to the viewer, yet it seems quite natural, without any problems of pacing or clumsy exposition. The shot of the girl, circa 1998, at the beginning is unnecessary, and caused confusion for me because for a while I thought other things were being shown in a nonlinear fashion. I can see the purpose: This whole tale is based on the sort of supernatural rumors/urban myths that are common in Japan. But I think it would've been better to begin in the '60s. The style of that little prolog is also jarring, with rapid cuts and techno music. But moving on, the pacing is good and there is a lot of tension and creepiness throughout. It transforms into a more immediate sort of horror in the last third.Some minor continuity issues are created. It seems unlikely that Asakawa Reiko in "Ringu" wouldn't run across any news reports or verbal accounts of tragedy at the play, or the aftermath. I mean, there was a whole audience there when it happened. People were killed. There would be a newspaper report, and probably a police investigation. Also, nobody ever calls the police in the whole movie, although that might be a cultural thing I don't understand. But for the most part, the movie rings true (no pun intended). It's not one of those sequels with massive retcons.On to the main thing I don't understand. As I understand it, Sadako has an identical twin who her father has been keeping locked up all these years, and has given drugs so she never underwent proper puberty. This twin is a physical person, not a spirit. The stuff with Sadako's mother as the "other person" was apparently a red herring, although her ghost is really there and is playing some nebulous role. But Sadako's twin's astral self has been following Sadako around and causing these problems, and eventually takes partial control of Sadako's mangled body. But at the end it's Sadako who's killed, and her twin is unaccounted for. We don't even see the twin except for in one shot in the forest, and even that could be an astral projection. So what happened to her? And why wasn't she in the room that Miyaji went into? And why doesn't her father make some attempt to save her from the murderous mob that randomly arrives at his door? Also, why does Touyama go along with the mob? And what was that business with Sadako's body distorting itself in the room with Miyaji and Etsuko? A random creepy thing for effect, or something important I'm failing to connect? None of these things make sense to me. I haven't read any of the books, so that might be where the problem lies.Now a couple miscellaneous observations. There are some sort of secret messages in the film, symbols that appear on the screen for a few frames. I noticed two, but there are probably more. I'm assuming this is a clever little thing done to foreshadow the cryptic videotape in the sequel, and not a mastering error on the D.V.D. I'm rather annoyed that so many reviewers bring up "Carrie." This film owes nothing to "Carrie." They both just happen to be based on the same real-life phenomena.This is a riveting, truly scary movie that may be better or worse than how I've rated it depending on whether or not the "plot flaws" I see in the final third are actually plot flaws.

This is a quite good and interesting prequel to the Japanese Ringu series. It perhaps its not necessarily good as a part of the Ringu series but as a stand alone movie it simply is a really great one.This movie focuses on how Sadako becomes the murdering spirit. It sounds like a bad idea to give the 'monster' a face and a backdrop story and yes, this is perhaps also why "Ringu 0: Bâsudei" is perhaps not that great as a part of the Ringu series. This movie is also less horror like and orientated as any other movie out of the series and it focuses more on the dramatic aspects of the Sadako character. It's not her fault that she is the way she is and she actually is a cute and shy person. This sort of ruins the image of the evil Sadako spirit we know from the other Ringu movies. In that regard this movie suffers from the same problem as "Hannibal Rising". It gives the monster a face and because of that we loose some of our respect for the character and it ruins his original image. For instance I never saw Sadako as a young adult but more as a 12 year old child or so. In this movie she is presented as a young woman.But like I said, it can't be denied that as a standalone movie this is simply a great one to watch. It's nicely directed with a good overall visual style and it has a good compelling story, that mixes drama with some more supernatural elements. You can see this movie as "Ringu" meets "Carrie", since this movie story- and character-wise definitely show some similarities to the Brian De Palma horror classic "Carrie", from 1976.The movie doesn't always have a too fast pace and there is not always a lot happening within the movie. The first hour of the movie or so even feels quite redundant afterward. It isn't until very well halve way through that the movie starts to take off. It's also then that the movie its horror elements really start to kick in and the Sadako character starts to become the evil spirit we all know from the other Ringu movies. Not that the movie ever becomes truly scary but it has a nice eerie atmosphere that Japanese horror movies are so well known and liked for. So all in all, as a part of the Ringu series this movie perhaps isn't that great but as a stand alone movie it simply is a very good one. 8/10http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/