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Ring
UK DVD cover
Directed by	Hideo Nakata
Produced by	Taka Ichise
Written by	Hiroshi Takahashi
Starring	Nanako Matsushima Hiroyuki Sanada Rikiya Otaka Yoichi Numata
Cinematography	Junichirō Hayashi
Editing by	Nobuyuki Takahashi
Distributed by	Toho Company Ltd.
Release date(s)	January 31, 1998 (Japan)
Running time	96 min.
Language	Japanese
Budget	$1.2 million
Preceded by	Ring 0: Birthday
Followed by	Ring 2
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Ring (リング, Ringu^?) is a 1998 Japanese horror mystery film from director Hideo Nakata, adapted from the novel of the same name by Koji Suzuki, which draws from the Japanese folk tale Banchō Sarayashiki. The film stars Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Rikiya Otaka as members of a divorced family, each cursed by a videotape. The film was later remade in Korea as The Ring Virus (1999), and in the United States as The Ring (2002).

The film is the highest grossing horror film in Japan at 15.9 billion yen ($137.7 million) and is also considered the most frightening horror movie in Japan according to the investigation of Oricon.^[1]

A news reporter, Reiko Asakawa, is doing a feature on the sudden inexplicable death of her niece and several of her friends who, it is rumored, died exactly one week after watching a cursed videotape.

Her investigation leads her to a vacation resort where she locates the tape and, upon watching the film, which contains a surreal array of images, is cursed.

Helped by her ex-husband Ryūji (Hiroyuki Sanada), Reiko unearths information about the cryptic film and learns that the woman in the tape is the long-dead psychic Shizuko. Reiko and Ryūji decipher that Shizuko's daughter, Sadako, who was killed three decades earlier, is the vengeful spirit behind the curse. With the week coming to a close, Reiko must break the supernatural curse to save her and her son's lives.

There were two sequels shot in Japan: Rasen (also from 1998, aka Spiral) and Ring 2 (from 1999, and which was not based on Suzuki's works), as well as a prequel, Ring 0: Birthday (2000). There was also a Korean remake (called Ring in Korea and The Ring Virus abroad) that was the first ever joint film making venture between Korea and Japan.^{[citation needed]} A video game, known as The Ring: Terror's Realm in the U.S., was also released in 2000 for the Dreamcast.

The international success of the Japanese films launched a revival of horror filmmaking in Japan that resulted in such pictures as Kiyoshi Kurosawa's 2001 film Pulse (known as Circuit (回路, Kairo^?) in Japan), Takashi Shimizu's The Grudge (呪怨, Juon^?) (2000), Hideo Nakata's Dark Water (仄暗い水の底から, Honogurai mizu no soko kara^?, literally The Depths of Dark Water), also based on a short story by Suzuki), and Higuchinsky's Uzumaki (2000, aka Vortex, based on the Junji Ito horror manga of the same name).^{[citation needed]}

Most of the Ring stories also appeared as manga novels.

• Nanako Matsushima - Reiko Asakawa
• Miki Nakatani - Mai Takano
• Hiroyuki Sanada - Ryuji Takayama
• Yūko Takeuchi - Tomoko Oishi
• Hitomi Sato - Masami Kurahashi
• Yoichi Numata - Takashi Yamamura
• Yutaka Matsushige - Yoshino
• Katsumi Muramatsu - Kōichi Asakawa
• Rikiya Otaka - Yōichi Asakawa
• Masako - Shizuko Yamamura

• J-Horror
• Onryō
• Yotsuya Kaidan
• Sadako Yamamura

1. ^ http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/ranking/46667/

• The Ring at BitTorrent.com - via its relationship with Kadokawa Pictures, BitTorrent Inc. is the online site that has licensed The Ring for streaming and download.
• the ringworld - a fansite covering all aspects of the Ring series and movies.
• the Ring AREA - Contains of the cursed videos of the Ring cycle and their scene-by-scene analyses, as well as lots of other useful information.
• Ringu at the Internet Movie Database
• Snowblood Apple's Ring Cycle article - an overview of all Ring films.
• Snuff Video - Japanese heart-stopping terror with the Ring series.