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....

"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."

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.

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.

(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..."

Swedish meat balls moulded into the shapes of human eyes in a bread sauce with splashes of blood red tomato sauce.

The movie makers are certainly not trying for the titillation market. Those lodges could very well have been sexy seedy dives.

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...

• 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)

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

Around 17.

A bucket on a rope filled with dirty well water.

Yep this is THE film for all 'zombies down a well' horror movie fans. Not a dry arse in the house.

No baby penguin's are harmed in the making of this motion picture.

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.

March 31 , 2005