Rating summary

Movie		4.5
Video		4.5
Audio		4.5
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.5

Ringu Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman October 24, 2019

Note: This release is available as this standalone disc, as well as being available as part of Ringu Collection. That collection features white covers (as opposed to this disc's black cover, as seen above), but the disc contents are the same. This release has an insert booklet with an essay by Alexandra Heller-Nicholas; that essay, along with several others, is available as part of what is more of a pamphlet included in the box set.

J-Horror.

What do you think of when someone mentions this “national” genre? If you’re like any number of fans, and as both commentator David Kalat and even the back cover verbiage of this release mention, the Ring* series will no doubt be at the top of the list. Interestingly, the back cover states that the original Ring film “launched the J-horror boom in the West”, though Kalat takes at least some issue with that assertion in his appealing analysis of the film. Kind of interestingly (and maybe just a bit peculiarly) given this series' outsized reputation, none of the Ring films has evidently been released on Blu-ray for the domestic American market before this, but Arrow, long the curator of niche items for some devoted collectors, has once again come to the rescue with both a standalone release of Ring, as well as a boxed set including four films.

*Kalat makes a cogent case that the coinage Ringu is due to the transliteration of Japanese orthography, and that the film's director himself told Kalat the name of the film was Ring, so this review will utilize that name.

Note: While my hunch is there aren't that many people who aren't familiar with the basic story of Ring, especially given The Ring, its well remembered American remake, and while this review won't include any outright spoilers, for those who are unacquainted with the basic story, there are some salient plot points discussed below, so proceed at your own risk.

Having spent much of my adult life offering opinions on various home media fare, including too many “straight to video” entries than I care to name (and/or remember), I only half jokingly state that, yes, there were cursed VHS tapes back in the day. Ring of course plays upon that conceit, beginning with a kind of excited but slightly nerdy discussion between two female schoolmates who are aware of the supposed existence of a weird tape that, when watched, begins an inevitable series of events leading to the viewer’s death. Unfortunately for one of the schoolgirls, it turns out she saw the video, and it probably doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out what happens next, though director Hideo Nakata does hedge his bets just a little by refraining from any truly graphic imagery (and in fact Ring on the whole really doesn’t traffic in “traditional” horror blood and guts).

A relative of the now deceased girl turns out to be investigative reporter Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima), who knows of the stories of the cursed video and who begins looking into the death not just of her niece, but some of her niece’s friends. That ultimately leads to an isolated cabin in the woods (not this one), where the victims evidently vacationed before their demises, and it’s there that Reiko, because she’s the focal female in a horror film, finds a mysterious tape and decides to watch it. I'm obviously joking again when I say that the video probably would have only gotten half a star from most reviewers for both content and video quality, as it's an inchoate "story" delivered via a pixellated, grainy mess with hard to make out imagery exacerbated by some tracking problems. One way or the other, it's clear (or at least implied) that Reiko may be the latest person to be cursed, and it's that unsettling feeling that informs most of the rest of the story, even as Reiko attempts to ferret out the meaning behind the patently bizarre imagery.

Reiko and her ex-husband Ryūji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada) start poking around to figure out what’s going on, a quest made more panicked after Reiko discovers their young son watching the video. There’s arguably just a bit too much extraneous material stuffed into both these and some other supporting characters, as Reiko’s understandably desperate attempts to get to the bottom of things (no pun intended, for those who know the revelation the film offers) ends up involving a host of paranormal phenomena before getting to what is in essence a murder mystery.

Ring is rather notable both for its intriguing subtext(s) and for its completely unsettling mood, a mood which is arrived at without (as mentioned above) much in the way of truly graphic imagery. There’s an elegiac quality to the film that’s really quite remarkable not just within the annals of the horror genre (J- or otherwise), but I’d argue within the larger context of relatively contemporary film itself.

Ringu Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Ring is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Arrow Video with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.85:1. Arrow's insert booklet contains the following information on the restoration:

Ringu has been exclusively restored by Arrow Films and is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1 with stereo and 5.1 audio.

The original 35mm camera negative was scanned in 4K resolution at Imagica, Tokyo. The film was graded on Digital Vision's Nucoda Film Master and restored at R3Store Studios in London. The stereo and 5.1 mixes were reamstered from the original audio files at Deluxe Audio Services.

All materials for this restoration were made available by Kadokawa Corporation.

The grading was supervised and approved by Director of Photography Jun'ichirō Hayashi.

This is another great looking transfer from Arrow of a film that I suspect has been on some fans' "wish lists" for a while. The film intentionally doesn't really traffic in visual "pop", offering a kind of dour, often gray or slightly blue, look that is nonetheless represented here accurately and with at times rather surprising amounts of fine detail, considering the dark lighting conditions of certain scenes. Shadow detail is generally above average, even in the setting of the film's climax, which won't be spoiled here. Detail levels are quite appealing across the board, with fibers on outfits clearly discernable, and even some slightly better levels of detail (admittedly still pretty minimal) in the "cursed" video. There are just a couple of moments where clarity can falter a bit and grain is noticeably grittier looking (see screenshot 19 for one example), but one the whole things look nicely organic and there are no compression anomalies that I noticed.

Ringu Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Ring 's DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 track is alternately subtle and overpowering, and as such will probably delight a lot of audiophiles. The film's sound design is peppered with fun and at times spooky ambient environmental effects, and there are bursts of both LFE to encourage "startle" reactions and some high frequency "whines" that will almost inherently cause an unsettling feeling. There's a really good accounting of things like ambient reverb in settings like the cloistered environment of the film's climax. Dialogue is rendered cleanly and clearly throughout this problem free track.

Ringu Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Audio Commentary by David Kalat


• The Ring Legacy (1080p; 27:34) comes replete with a spoiler warning, but offers a slew of talking heads reminiscing about what the film has meant to them and the public at large.


• A Vicious Circle (1080p; 21:12) is a new interview with Kat Ellinger where she discusses Hideo Nakata and the entire Ring series.


• Circumnavigating Ring (1080p; 24:56) is an interesting video essay by Alexander Heller-Nicholas where she discusses the Ring cycle (sorry, couldn't resist).


• Sadako's Video (1080p; 00:50) is for those wanting to tempt fate, I guess. You're going to watch, aren't you?


• Ring / Spiral Double Bill Trailer 1 (1080p; 1:11)


• Ring / Spiral Double Bill Trailer 2 (1080p; 2:03)


• UK Trailer (1080p; 00:53)


• Image Gallery (1080p) is provided courtesy of Diego Lopez and Phillip Escott, but frankly only contains a handful of pictures.

Ringu Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

It may not seem like it now due to so many sequels and/or remakes, but Ring really was kind of sui generis when it first appeared in 1998, and it's still a uniquely unnerving film in several regards. Arrow's release sports solid technical merits and appealing supplements. Highly recommended.