Best movie of this year hands down!

Don't listen to the Hype. It's awful

The movie's not perfect, but it sticks the landing of its message. It was engaging - thrilling at times - and I personally thought it was a great time.

It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Arguably, the film that catapulted the Asian Horror genre to international audience. Ringu is certainly not without its flaws. Despite that, Ringu manages to age well after 20 years, despite the premise being a cursed video cassette. The film relies heavily on Shinto religion and superstition, hence, Western audience might cringe at some of its folklore. But Asian audience including South East, will immediately relate to the vengeful spirit of a supernatural source.It's simple really, a few teenagers died one week after watching a mysterious video cassette of unknown origin, spurred a reporter to investigate. Having watched the video herself, the reporter races against time to uncover the secrets of the cursed tape.By my account, Ringu is a mediocre horror film. It has a good story, the build-up is too long and too slow, the editing is sloppy and tremulous, the acting is mediocre, the script is choppy an incongruent. The first 30 minutes had too many unnecessary scenes that could have been excluded from the final cut. It also took 85 minutes of build up to reach Sadako. It wouldn't be too bad, except that there was 60 minutes in between the first death, with very few and unsuccessful attempts to hold your suspense.Sadako itself was a anti-climatic, and the ending is rather disappointing.What is good is the cinematography and direction. Despite major flaws of the film, Hideo Nakata was able to make the film coherent. And though he fails to keep things suspenseful, he does a job at creating an air of mystery that manages to make gauge your interest to the very end. Meanwhile, the cinematography by Junichiro Hayashi and music by Kenji Kawai was able to provide the sense of drama where the story and acting were sorely lacking.I really wanted to like this film, but there are other Asian horror films that are better.

Though the overall plot-lines of 1998's "Ringu" and 2002's "The Ring" were almost identical - (Surprise! Surprise!) - I, personally, thought that the American remake, "The Ring", was, by far, a much more effective and chilling ghost/horror story, in the long run.After reading all of the gushing raves that "Ringu" was getting from excited reviewers - I cannot believe how downright disappointing and, yes, anti-climatic this film was, for the most part.Not only did Ringu's story fail to hold and sustain any genuine suspense and terror - But, it was also very weak, visually - And, on top of that - The Japanese actors all seemed to be such amateurs who were just bland and forgettable nobodies, completely lacking in the ability to create dynamic character portrayals.Nope - For me - This was definitely one of those mighty rare instances where a remake actually surpassed the original on all counts.

The Ring has been on my informal watchlist for over a decade and I had high expectations which were deflated during the first snail-paced hour.The film features Hiroyuki Sanada in the main role, playing the exact same man we've seen him be in Sunshine, Lost, Helix and the rest: more frustratingly vague than mysterious. The female character is forgettable.And the horror? Back in 1998 the meme of ghostly Asian girl in a white dress was fairly new, so we can forgive its use here. The ending scene is terrific, really sent some chills down my spine. And before that we see the contents of the actual video which are quite trippy & beguiling. There's also a nicely-done scene in a well.But to get to these good parts you will have to sit through an hour or so of interminably dull build-up. If you can prepare yourself for that, then you'll probably enjoy the final scenes.Recommended if you enjoy slow-burning Asian horror. Otherwise you may find yourself tempted to give up before the hour mark, or at least skipping forward (a terrible sin reserved only for the worst films, of which this isn't one).

If you were wondering what the difference between Ringu and The Ring is, I 'll try to sum it up for you. You remember that TV series adaption of Stephen King's "IT"? Ringu is a lot like that. There is a lot of reflection scares and horror-mystery elements, but it has such a weak pay off. With the American version, you get significantly better scares and death scenes. I would have been okay with the classic "scream then cut to next scene", but the black and white-invert color thing, too? Any respect or immersion I had was ANNIHILATED by those scenes! I laughed at the death scenes! Those scenes made Ringu is a complete and utter failure of a horror movie! I would still recommend watching it if only to see the original Japanese version, but that's only justification I could give. To be honest, I didn't find the American version all that good either. A tape that takes 7 days to kill you is just not that threatening to me. Now if Sadako were "Final Destination"-ing people near immediately after they viewed the tape, THAT would have been glorious!