‘The Ring’ and Its Many Adaptations

This year marks the 20th anniversary of Gore Verbinski’s The Ring (2002), one of the most iconic movies to come out of the Japanese horror wave that swept America in the early 2000s. While many know that Verbinski’s movie was a remake of 1998’s Ringu, both were based on the titular novel by Koji Suzuki and make up half of the four film adaptations of the novel. While each film mostly shares this story at its core, every director experiments with the idea of a curse spread through videotape and the vengeful spirit who created it, thus culminating in a set of films that build upon each other to tell a story that remains partly relevant and iconic to this day.

Suzuki’s book revolves around a journalist named Kazuyuki Asakawa, who is investigating the deaths of four teenagers who mysteriously died one night at the same time. This leads him to the holiday resort they stayed at one week before their deaths, where he watches a videotape containing various disturbing sequences and concludes with a warning that he now has only seven days before his death. Hearing what happened to Kazuyuki, his best friend, Ryuji, begs him for a copy of the tape and finds himself cursed as well. In the search for a way to stop themselves from dying, they learn the story of Shizuko Yamamura, a woman gifted with extrasensory perception that was later branded as a fraud. With her grift revealed, Shizuko commits suicide by jumping into the crater of a volcano while her daughter, Sadako, watches on in horror. Years later, Sadako’s father is hospitalized, and his doctor falls in love with her as she visits the father’s bedside; that infatuation turns dark and he sexually assaults her, infecting her with smallpox. In the doctor’s guilt, he throws her into a well before crushing her with rocks. In Sadako’s last moments, her powers projected images of a lifetime of trauma onto the videotape — which was found by the teens. When Kazuyuki’s wife, pregnant with his child, unwittingly watches the tape in the midst of the investigation, he and Ryuji frantically track down the location of the well in an attempt to put her soul to rest and stop the curse. Even though it appears they were successful, the next day Ryuji is found dead in his apartment. In that moment, Kazuyuki finally understands that the curse acts like a virus — spreading from viewer to viewer – and that he survived because he made a copy of the tape. Knowing that this is the only way to save his family, he chooses to continue the ring of revenge and curse someone else.

The first adaptation, Ring: Kanzenban, is a 1995 made-for-TV film directed by Chisui Takigawa. It follows the story of the novel most faithfully, and though it was never remade entirely, many aspects of its narrative would be borrowed in subsequent films. Kanzenban is the only movie that extensively delves into the spirit’s background, treating it like a mystery in which Kazuyuki (Katsunori Takahashi) unravels the threads of a cold case nobody cared to solve. It also makes clear that the tape, shot from a child’s point of view, are the traumatic moments she had to endure alone — moments she wished anyone else could have witnessed to save her. However, rather than appearing as a terrifying specter, Takigawa reveals Sadako (Ayane Miura) by having her appear nude and bathed in a soft white light, disarming those she has cursed by calmly explaining the reason for her revenge and giving them a choice: pass on her story or be killed by her hands. 

Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998) slimmed the novel’s story down slightly and crafted a visual identity that would be emulated in every subsequent film in the franchise. Choosing to set the movie in perpetually overcast locations to desaturate the colors, the movie has a dreariness that runs through it — a mood that is only broken in scenes where the characters are completely safe and the colors become vibrant, creating a moment of reprieve. The harsh shadows made by artificial light are turned into pools of inky blackness, wherein a character could be pulled into oblivion at a moment’s notice. Ringu also marks the first appearance of Sadako (Rie Ino’o) with the pale skin, white dress, and long black hair which has become synonymous with the character. Despite a short screen time, she outlines a set of movements and mannerisms that clearly portray Sadako as something not of our world.

The latter two adaptations of Suzuki’s novel would attempt to combine the narrative structure and characterization of the spirit found in Kanzenban with the presentation of Ringu to varying degrees of success.

The Ring Virus (1999), directed by Kim Dong-bin, is a Korean remake of the ‘98 film that unfortunately feels watered down in comparison. The use of shadows and harsh lighting from Ringu is present, but instead of being used to evoke a sense of dread, it clearly telegraphs moments in which something supernatural will occur. This coupled with the bizarre addition of musical cues relating to this movie’s spirit, Eun-Suh (Bae Doona), and any tension created by the solid camerawork quickly goes out the window. Virus also pulls from Kanzenban by treating the plot more like a mystery than a horror film, however the characters seem to just stumble forward to the movie’s conclusion through scenes where characters will appear for exposition before quickly leaving, never to be heard from again. While the film isn’t terrible, the decision to not take any major risks both aesthetically and narratively leave it in a strange spot compared to the other films in the franchise.

Gore Verbinski’s The Ring (2002) only loosely follows the novel and film it’s based on. Like Kanzenban, it spends its time delving into the mystery behind its spirit, Samara (Daveigh Chase), while using the cursed tape’s images as clues which manifest in the real world; leading the movie’s characters through her past. Sadly, the memories seen on the tape are the only real depth the character has; everything the previous adaptations had to say about trauma and grief have been removed and replaced with a vague backstory that boils down to her being an evil child with powers and a mother so scared of her that she had to push her down a well. The movie is much stronger visually, and the choice to set the film in Seattle, Washington was an excellent decision. It allows Verbinski to take a page from Ringu and use the city’s reputation for constant rain to paint it blue and teal, again only saturing the colors in moments of total safety. His decision to make the tape more of an extension of Samara’s powers than previous films also creates incredibly unnerving moments that find our main character, Rachel (Naomi Watts), walking under a precariously placed ladder, having an up-close encounter with a horse, and being able to pull a fly off a television screen and hold it between her fingers.

The Ring went on to have two sequels which explored Samara’s backstory and the idea of her curse spreading virally, while Ringu would spawn eight sequels. The first three, Rasen (1998), Ring 2 (1999), and Ring 0: Birthday, were connected to Nakata’s film and delved into the mythos of Suzuki’s novels and provided more depth to Sadako’s story; they also maintained a lot of the themes and visual influence present in Ringu. When the series was rebooted in 2012 with Sadako 3D the cinematography and weight of the story was put aside for quick scares that rely on franchise recognition; though I will admit the crossover with Takashi Shimizu’s Ju-On: The Grudge in 2016’s Sadako vs. Kayako was surprisingly fun. Personally, I was surprised to find that Ring: Kanzenban would come to be my favorite adaptation of the novel; its strong story overpowers the somewhat dated appearance. I encourage you to explore as much of this franchise as you can, whether it be through hunting down the lesser known films and sequels, or rewatching the 2002 film again, there is an incredible breadth of novels, film, television, manga, and more to engage with — all of it terrifying and effective.