RINGU *** (out of four) DreamWorks widescreen edition Image A Sound B+

Buy at Amazon USA Buy at Amazon Canada or Compare Prices Released on DVD in the United States by DreamWorks the same day as its American remake, Hideo Nakata's Ringu is neither inferior nor superior to the Hollywood version--for every one thing it does better, another pales in comparison to director Gore Verbinski and screenwriter Ehren Kruger's rethink. There are actually few scenes in Ringu without analog in The Ring, and the absence of Verbinski's one major addition (save an entirely different backstory for the paranormal villainess)--the horse suicide--is deeply felt when viewing Ringu second. Also, Nakata's rendering of the pivotal tape is too brief to unsettle. But where The Ring ultimately concerns the importance of paying attention to your children, Ringu holds greater resonance as another Japanese genre film about living in the shadow of an apocalypse and how that creates a hyper-awareness of one's mortality--the joint death sentence of the story's characters is not only more deeply felt in Ringu, but when it's finally lifted for a chosen individual, it feels like time's been borrowed, not regained. (There also seems to be an allusion to atomic terror in the closing shot, which unmistakably references the same in the nuclear-themed The Terminator: a saviour heroine chasing a ray of hope on a stormy open road.) Both pictures are scary in different ways--The Ring through atmospherics, Ringu through framing that favours negative space, leaving the viewer in constant fear that something will suddenly fill it. Ringu, meanwhile, makes slier tributes to Hitch (Verbinski apes Arbogast's murder in Psycho in The Ring's prologue and later has Rachel rent out "cabin twelve," but Nakata latches onto Hitchcock's compulsion to date-stamp scenes (Verbinski opts for a simplified "Day One," "Day Two" approach)), avoids Sixth Sense-isms (acknowledging of course that Ringu came before M. Night Shyamalan's crowd-pleaser, the Rachel equivalent's son in Ringu is not psychic, though her ex-husband has the less-than-honed gift of ESP--the device, alas, doesn't amount to much in either film), and achieves a creepier ghost-emerging-from-the-idiot-box effect by shooting it in reverse, giving Ringu's Sadako a truly otherworldly walk. It's a toss-up, then, and DreamWorks doesn't make deciding any easier by presenting Ringu in a 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen transfer that ranks as the best I've ever seen of an Asian import. Print quality is pristine and the image is incredibly smooth. The Japanese 5.1 Dolby Digital mix is not as squirm-inducing as The Ring's, though well-placed telephone rings in the rear discretes had me jumping out of my skin each and every time. Trailers for The Ring, Catch Me If You Can, and 8 Mile cap off the disc.-Bill Chambers Running Time 96 minutes Aspect Ratio(s) 1.85:1 ONLY, 16x9-enhanced; Languages Japanese DD 5.1; CC No; Subtitles English, French, Spanish; DVD-9; Region One; DreamWorks

Likewise, as The Ring unfolds its essentially video mystery (The Conversation's enigma hinges, of course, on a dialogue captured on audiotape), it examines the nature and the danger of all journeys of self-discovery--the primary difference being that where The Conversation is a castration fable, The Ring is a story involved in the archetypal terror and mystery of feminine fertility and reproduction. There are four essential types of fertility and they relate to the four essential feminine archetypes: the virgin, the mother, the whore, and the crone, the last of whom encompasses elements of the previous three (the waxing and waning represented often in Western myth as the four moon cycles--and "The Golden Girls").

Rachel (Naomi Watts) is the fertile mother. A reporter for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer in a dreary, sepia-drenched vision of the Pacific Northwest, she learns of an urban myth involving a videocassette that, once watched, dooms the viewer to sudden death in one week's time. Representing the pre-fertile (virgin) is the lost child Samara (Daveigh Chase) at the heart of the film's central mystery (placing The Ring among generational paranoia films like The Exorcist and Don't Look Now); representing the post-fertile (crone) is the child's barren mother, Anna (Shannon Cochran); and representing the idea of fecund renewal (whore) is the tape itself, which courts an endless parade of suitors. Each of the non-mother, non-fertile characters seek progeny in ways unnatural and pernicious (a Frankenstein motif), so that this story of Rachel unravelling the secret of the video becomes a story of a reproductive female poking at the mystery of her own sex and sexuality.

Opening in a monumental urban fairy tale way like Bernard Rose's excellent Candyman (sharing that film's wisdom in moody, understated score as well), The Ring is taut and frightening by its own merits. It knows how to use empty space and shock moments to brilliant effect, trusting in a cavernous aural fidelity that is as disconcerting in its way as The Exorcist's subliminal sound mélange. Though I would argue that an examination of the feminine myths of the film add immeasurably to its enjoyment, lending import as well to a harrowing scene involving a horse on a ferry, submersions into bloody water, and, of course, the vaginal tube of its ring/well image, The Ring is entertaining on its standalone merits. Naomi Watts is excellent, the dreaded VHS dub itself is a fun pop-rendition of Buñuel filtered through a Nine Inch Nails sensibility (imagine Un Chien Andalou as a nightmare of feminine sexuality rather than masculine--"It's very film school," one character opines), and though Rachel's precocious "I see dead people" kid (David Dorfman) is more a device than a character, as a device he works predictably well.

Clever and loaded with issues both complex and obvious (media and voyeurism are handled well, though better in Watts' other dense mood piece Mulholland Drive), The Ring is an example of mainstream cinema that takes a storied and fabulous foreign work and honours many (if not all) of its subtler echoes while marrying it well to good ol' fashioned American technocratic anxiety. As film and cross-cultural adaptation it is superior to Christopher Nolan's Insomnia in nearly every respect, discarding the conventional answers and conclusions that plague the majority of Hollywood's squeamish, cowardly iterations and output. The Ring is fine cinema, blessed with an unusual respect for the horror genre and its own inherent silliness; it would be bottom-heavy with subtext were it not also lovely, haunted, and well-performed, and it joins The Rules of Attraction as a nice surprise of the early fall season.-Walter Chaw

The Ring DVD's only significant extra is a fifteen-minute jumble of expunged footage (edited by Gore Verbinski himself) called "Don't Watch This," mastered in DD 5.1 and anamorphic widescreen. In an alternative method of Rachel discovering her niece's photo receipt, she comes across a movie collection featuring some hilarious fabricated titles, such as Heartfelt Sap. This blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment of levity is superior to other deleted attempts at humour--one is glad that none of the Blockbuster Video bits wound up in the film; one is not as thrilled that all those provocative snapshots of Amber Tamblyn hit the cutting-room floor. Verbinski's busy schedule (he's currently finishing this summer's big-budget Pirates of the Caribbean) limited his participation to this featurette, but since he's not averse to Special Editions (see: The Mexican's DVD), it's not unreasonable to expect that he'll deliver additional supplements on a future platter of The Ring. (I hope, if and when that day comes, the disc's cover art improves drastically.) A block of trailers for Ringu, Catch Me If You Can, and 8 Mile round out the disc.-Bill Chambers

THE MEXICAN

THE TIME MACHINE (uncredited)

PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN

THE WEATHER MAN

also by Hideo Nakata

DARK WATER

THE RING TWO