RING: KANZENBAN (RINGU) (1995 - Japanese)

Studio:       Amuse Video
Director:    Chisui Takigawa
Writer:       Joji Iida, Taizo Soshigaya, Koji Suzuki
Producer:  Ryunosuke Endo, Hidehiro Iwadera, Noriyasu Ueki
Stars:     Katsunori Takahashi, Ayane Miura, Yoshio Harada

Review Score:

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Summary:

A disgraced reporter and a parapsychology professor investigate the mystery of a cursed video connected to four sudden deaths.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Teenager Tomoko Oishi unexpectedly experiences paranormal activity in her home before dying of a sudden heart attack.

While riding in a cab, disgraced reporter Kazuyuki Asakawa witnesses motorcyclist Iwata Shuichi dying of a sudden heart attack on the street. Kazuyuki notices that Iwata’s watch is stopped at 12:49am, his time of death.

Kazuyuki returns home to his pregnant wife Shizuka and learns that their niece Tomoko died. The couple visits Tomoko’s family and Kazuyuki discovers Tomoko also died at 12:49am.

Investigating a hunch, Kazuyuki asks his Toto Newspaper Co. colleague Yoshino about an article concerning the sudden heart attack deaths of teen lovers Takehiko Nomi and Yoko Tsuji. He learns that they too died at 12:49am while having sex in a car.

Yoshino asks his editor about Kazuyuki’s demotion. The editor tells the story of parapsychology professor Ryuji Takayama, a believer in clairvoyance who was acquitted of his wife’s suspicious murder. Kazuyuki helped Takayama investigate unsolved mysteries. Although popular opinion believes Takayama is a killer, Kazuyuki’s public support of Takayama in newspaper articles is thought to have influenced his acquittal.

Believing the four heart attacks are related, Kazuyuki eventually connects the teen victims to a night shared in a room at the South Hakone Pacific Land resort. Kazuyuki finds an unmarked videotape taken from the room by the hotel manager and watches it. A sequence of bizarre imagery on the tape concludes with a warning that the person who watched the video will die in seven days. The video then begins giving instructions on how to avoid death, but cuts abruptly, having been recorded over.

Kazuyuki immediately receives a phone call, but hears nothing on the other end. He notes the time as 10:08pm.

The next day, Kazuyuki takes the tape and tells his story to Ryuji Takayama. Despite the supposed curse, Takayama insists that Kazuyuki make a copy of the tape and leave it for him to study. Takayama later watches the tape and confirms to Kazuyuki that he believes the curse is real.

From clues on the tape, the professor theorizes that a camera did not record the footage. Rather, the footage is a materialization of someone’s visual memory. Other clues connect the video to Izu-Oshima Island and the Mount Mihara volcano. Takayama concludes that if they can find who created the imagery, they can release the grudge and stop the curse.

Takayama shows Kazuyuki old film footage of Taido University professor Heihachiro Ikuma publicly demonstrating clairvoyance using Shizuko Yamamura as his subject. The experiment becomes a discrediting disaster. However, Takayama points out the presence of Sadako Yamamura in the footage, who was Ikuma and Shizuko’s daughter, and was believed to possess psychic powers.

Takayama tells Kazuyuki that they need to travel to Oshima to speak to Sadako’s remaining relative, her elderly uncle Takashi. With only two days left until his predicted death, Kazuyuki says he would rather spend that time with his wife. However, when Kazuyuki returns home to discover his wife inadvertently watched the video, Kazuyuki realizes he needs to stop the curse to save his family and agrees to go to the island.

Takashi Yamamura tells the two men that Professor Ikuma is to blame for forcing Shizuko to have a child and for exploiting her abilities for personal fame. Driven mad from being continually put in front of crowds, Shizuko killed herself by jumping into the volcano. Sadako was left alone, bullied as a child before leaving the island to pursue acting in a troupe called ‘Hisho.’

Kazuyuki tracks down Arimo, who was in the acting company with Sadako. After initially fleeing from Kazuyuki, Arimo tells him of his friend Shigemori, who was infatuated with Sadako and wanted to be her boyfriend. While drunk one night, Arimo and Shigemori went to Sadako’s apartment and discovered she was in a consensually sexual relationship with her father. Enraged, Shigemori assaulted Sadako, but died of sudden heart failure.

Takayama tracks down Jotaro Nagao, who was Heihachiro Ikuma’s doctor. Takayama and Kazuyuki question Jotaro and learn that he fell in love with Sadako while treating her father at his hospital. Jotaro admits that he forced himself on Sadako and professed his desire to marry her after she bit him in retaliation. Sadadko laughed and allowed Jotaro to go down on her, which is when he discovered Sadako was a hermaphrodite. Jotaro immediately backed away, prompting Sadako to attack him with her psychic powers. To save himself, Jotaro pushed Sadako into a nearby well and killed her.

Takayama and Kazuyuki learn that Jotaro’s hospital used to be in Hakone, the same town as the resort where the teens watched the tape. Discovering that the resort was built over the well where Sadako died, the men conclude that they need to recover Sadako’s remains and bury her properly to put her spirit to rest.

Takayama and Kazuyuki find the well under the hotel and Kazuyuki eventually retrieves Sadako’s skull. When his death deadline passes, Kazuyuki assumes the curse was broken. Sadako’s remains are burned and Kazuyuki delivers the ashes to her uncle. Dr. Nagao hangs himself.

When Takayama’s curse deadline comes due, Sadako appears to him in a vision holding a child. Sadako strangles Takayama and he dies. Kazuyuki comes to the house and learns from Takayama’s student lover that his last words were “your child.”

Kazuyuki realizes that by copying the videotape and having Takayama watch it, he actually passed on the curse and saved himself. A vision of Sadako entrances Kazuyuki and the missing scene from the tape confirms that someone who sees the video must become a servant who leads a new person to death.

Kazuyuki concludes that for his wife to be saved, she too must pass her curse to someone else. Kazuyuki realizes that the curse must continually pass in an unbroken ring around humanity for anyone to avoid death.

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Review:

Before Gore Verbinski and Naomi Watts spooked audiences with the 2002 American remake “The Ring,” there was of course Hideo Nakata’s 1998 Japanese precursor “Ringu” (as well as a sequel, a TV series, another sequel, a Korean remake, a video game, and a prequel, but those are beside the point right now).  What some might not be aware of however, is that before the theatrical “Ringu,” there was a 1995 TV version now known as “Ring: Kanzenban,” which was actually the first filmic adaptation of Koji Suzuki’s original “Ring/Ringu” book.

“Ring: Kanzenban,” which translates to “Ring: The Complete Edition,” has to date only appeared on Japanese television, VHS, and LaserDisc, and not since 1997.  “Kanzenban” has never been officially released outside of Japan either, though tracking down a copy with fan-sourced subtitles is as simple as a single internet search.

By all accounts, “Ring: Kanzenban” is the most faithful film adaptation of “Ringu,” sticking to the story from Koji Suzuki’s source novel in ways the 1998 and 2002 versions most certainly do not.  This means that if everything you know about Sadako Yamamura (or Samara Morgan for English-only fans) comes from the theatrical movies, “Kanzenban” has several surprises in store.

Disgraced newspaper reporter Kazuyuki Asakawa’s niece just died of a sudden heart attack.  So did a young motorcyclist stopped in the street next to Kazuyuki’s cab.  When Kazuyuki learns of two more teens who dropped dead at the same time under similar circumstances, an impromptu investigation begins and dots connect him to a resort room where these four friends watched a mysterious videotape.

Being the clue the victims have in common, Kazuyuki watches the tape too.  As bizarre images flicker onscreen, a supernatural assault surrounds him.  Kazuyuki feels fright consuming mind, body, and soul until the video concludes with a warning that viewers will die in seven days.

Kazuyuki takes the videocassette to parapsychology professor Ryuji Takayama, a suspected killer whose association with Kazuyuki is what put the reporter in hot water in the first place.  Despite the forewarning of death, Takayama insists on watching the tape and concludes that its curse appears real.  Now both men must decipher what the images mean if they are to solve the mystery and save their own lives.

Whatever expectations you take with you into “Ring: Kanzenban,” they should not include seeing a traditional J-horror ghost with stringy hair crawling out of a television screen, or from a well for that matter.  As alluded to earlier, this is not the same “Ringu” that film fans have become familiar with.

Subsequent installments in the series often emphasize the videotape, placing it or its footage in prominent scenes to heighten fear factors.  The tape still plays an important part in “Kanzenban,” although the objective is less on scare tactics and more on brokering suspense.  Here the tape serves mainly as a delivery device to get the mystery moving in a backward direction as Kazuyuki and Takayama piece together Sadako’s story, which is where the movie’s real meat lies.

Sadako is a different beast in “Kanzenban,” figuratively and literally.  She appears in a few visions to point accusatorily once or twice, yet she is decidedly not portrayed as anything close to a croaking ghoul.

Sadako’s origin in this instance is steeped in soap opera, much of the movie is, bridging her background with some shock reveals that complicate her character in wickedly intriguing ways.  This Sadako is more beautiful, more human, more tragic, and more twisted than usual.

The film has no qualms about loading up on inessential nudity, Sadako in particular favors dropping her top, and even less shame about sweetening a subplot involving incestuous intimacy with misplaced sentimentality.  It’s also kind of ridiculous how much ground “Kanzenban” covers with its copious characters and clues linking a long chain together.

Yet you take what you think you know about “The Ring,” factor in made-for-TV status, and “Kanzenban” becomes so brazen in its bizarreness that it is fascinating to see unfold as a thriller.  It’s like a Russian nesting doll always ready to reveal one more layer to the plot or to a person.  Each pulled curtain usually results in a weirded out “what?” reaction, though in this exception that is a compliment.

It’s an easy matter to poo-poo the production value and implausible parts of the presentation, of which there are plenty.  But a big part of what makes “Ring: Kanzenban” oddly transfixing is how its proximity to the late 1980s/early 1990s, TV quality standards, and VHS veneer give a great throwback vibe for a 21st-century viewing (synthesized take on “The Exorcist” theme anyone?).

Franchise faithful have to admit that on uniqueness alone, “Ring: Kanzenban” carves out its place in “Ringu” canon.  Sometimes cheesy, sometimes chilling, there is a uniqueness to it that is arguably effective, but inarguably entertaining.

Review Score:  75

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