Studio executives summary / pitch
|
| Original
Japanese techno-horror classic. Who would have thought that video tapes could
be this dangerous...? Let this be a warning to you: HOME
TAPING KILLS! |
Short plot
summary |
|
Part
One Woman
with ESP (Sadako) was murdered and was left for dead down a well filled with dirty
smelly water. She lived for 28 years down there, so, like, as you would, she has
cursed people. Her
vitriol is visited on those who play a video tape in which she zombies
out of her well-grave and climbs through the television screen to getcha... How
does she do this? Maybe she stinks and they die of the smell? Or maybe she looks
awful and her looks simply kill her victims? In any event, there is a missed opportunity
for a good fight, the victims just give up and die with a look of terror on their
faces... Reiko Asakawa is a journalist with a child son who investigates this
strange phenomena. Part
Two Reiko
Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) has finally gone mad, she has smashed up the television
in her apartment and ripped out the video tapes and apparently tried to wash them
down the plug in the bath... She
is put into a hospital - Her son, Yoichi, is caught wandering around. It is discovered
that he has ESP and they try to pull the powers from him using the old paper in
water trick. Does it work? Well, here's hoping for The Ring 3.... |
What our
panel of critics thought |
"So, to
escape just press eject and then run for the hills? That isn't scary that's just
common sense.""So,
if you watch the video on fast forward does she get you twice as fast?""So,
if you watch the video on fast backwards does she disappear back down the well
again?""I
never liked the video tape technology and have been converted to DVD for the last
3 years. I suppose one day they may come up with a zombie that can get out of
a DVD player but I feel convinced that, after having spun around at 2000 rpm's
they will be as dizzy as can be and will simply fall over when they get out of
the television set.""I
have never liked SCART connections, it just makes this kind of attack inevitable
me thinks.""I
found this eerie but not scary, bitch: fix me a sushi sandwich." |
Please
try to tell me the ending
|
Part
One: There
is no end in sight at the end of part one. There does seem to be some kind of
fix for this zombie attack, however: Copy the video and show someone else within
the week... But,
at the end of the movie, we are left with the horrible thought: had this whole
enterprise begun because a bunch of students hired out a blank tape from the lodge?
Why on earth someone would choose to hire out a blank tape from the selection
at the lodge is beyond us. The selection behind the counter looked reasonably
large (2-3 shelves full?) All of the titles are in Japanese so the titles might
have been a load of old tosh for all we know, but, for argument's sake, let's
assume the collection included, say, The Matrix, Star Wars and Gladiator, and
still somebody chooses to watch a blank tape and then be murdered because of it?
It makes no sense to us at all... This whole almost 4 hour, two part epic, could
have been ended within 4 minutes with better home entertainment selection! No
wonder the Japanese economy is in the state it is in... Part
Two: We find
out how Sadako was killed and buried (at sea in an amazingly floaty coffin) but
she escapes and returns to wreak havoc. |
Justify
this movie's existence in the classic strand. From
theVoiceof Reason.com's classically trained Veritable Cornucopia |
| A
couple of nicely tense movies, the plot itself is much better in the second one,
although obviously you have to sit through number one to work out what is going
on. This movie is not in the popcorn strand simply because it is a little bit
too scary for that favourite cinema food - some of the more scary bits might lead
to viewers throwing the popcorn over their shoulders with fright which is not
a good idea and could make us liable to damages... A
problem with these movies is that if you do not accept the premise that someone
can crawl out of a television, like our anti-hero does at the end of part one,
it all seems a bit like running around and screaming because nobody can work out
how to switch the television off which can be a bit annoying after a while...
The
main point to scary movies, to my mind, is the sheer horrible possibly that even
in the crazy circumstances the characters find themselves in, it could all very
possibly happen. This plot just isn't like that. I suppose if you didn't know
how video cassettes work then it is possible that you might be scared that someone
could hide on the tape and jump out at you, and some of the photographs are eerie,
however it just seems so easy to stop the attacks: ie switch off the video player,
pull the plug out of the wall for goodness sake... what's so hard about that? Having
had that moan, the movies are nicely paced and quietly hysterical in places. There
is a very real feeling of foreboding here and if you like a tense movie then this
may very well be for you. At
the time of writing this review one has not seen the latest English language movies
of the same name. |
Quotable
quotes (real) |
| (From
translation) "Tomoko died in here..." "My
dad's fat, my mum's fat and so I am fat too..." "People
don't usually die like that..." "Bubble
bubble glub glub glub..." |
What snack should I eat while watching this movie? |
|
Swedish meat
balls moulded into the shapes of human eyes in a bread sauce with splashes of
blood red tomato sauce. |
If
I were to watch this at home how best should I sit?
|
| Holding
the remote control with a view to pressing STOP as soon as a woman with terrible
hair tries to climb out of the television set. |
Could this movie be improved with more motel naughtiness? |
| The
movie makers are certainly not trying for the titillation market. Those lodges
could very well have been sexy seedy dives. |
How scary is this film? |
|
Evil photos.
Claustrophobia:
A man climbs down a well to bucket out water with the possibility that a woman
with a bad hairstyle could zombie out at him at any moment. A
woman with a bad hairstyle climbs slowly out of the television set (and the victims
are too terrorised to run for the hills). In Part Two you have the added dimension
of burial at sea. The
almost final scene in the first movie (where she climbs out of the TV) has been
voted one of the scariest moments in movie history. It is good, however, we think
it would have been more scary if the whole television had exploded when she crashed
through it... Fire and banging would have made the event more exciting to our
minds... |
Name five friends to watch this movie with you
|
- The
'I saw that coming all along' guy.
- A
woman who threatens to pee in her pants if anything scary like that happens again,
and then does so.
- The
person with a cell phone ring exactly like the phone ring in this movie
- Manager
of a television/video repairs company
- Any
western hairstylist (to watch in horror at the horrendous Japanese hair styles
in this movie)
|
What can I take from this movie to make me a better person? |
| If
you have ESP: don't tell anyone about it. Nobody will understand you, you will
be ridiculed and have to spend 28 years of your life down a well... it's just
not worth it babe |
Estimate number of inexplicable deaths in these movies. |
| Around
17. |
How much would you pay for a copy of this movie in goods? |
| A
bucket on a rope filled with dirty well water. |
If there is a genre that has been little explored to date, it is the 'zombies
down a well' idea. Tell me this movie will make up for this oversight? |
| Yep
this is THE film for all 'zombies down a well' horror movie fans. Not a dry arse
in the house. |
I notice the Japanese title for this movie is Ringu, that is a lot like everyone's
favourite stop frame animated cartoon baby penguin Pingu, tell me he ain't harmed
in this movie mister... |
|
No baby penguin's
are harmed in the making of this motion picture. |
Other comments |
| A
quiet, eerie, Japanese horror-thriller, with some (one?) memorable bits. Problem
is that the plot is probably a bit too technobabbly for its own good. |
Date
of review |
| March
31 , 2005 |