Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998) is not only one of the best horror movies of the 1990s, but also one of the best adaptations of a horror book ever put to screen. It’s a film that oozes with atmosphere, making a movie about a haunted VHS tape feel like an extension of the very curse it explores. Of course, a great adaptation depends on the strength of the source material, and Ringu has that in the terrifying book of the same name written by Koji Suzuki, the man many consider to be the Stephen King of Japan. Like the American king of horror himself, Suzuki is inseparable from adaptations of his work because of what his name means to anything it’s attached to, especially to the genre he favors. Where Suzuki goes, great horror follows.
Japan Society seems to be keenly aware of this as its upcoming screening of Ringu will feature an in-person appearance by Suzuki for an introduction to the movie followed by a book signing. The event, presented in collaboration with Kodansha USA, will take place on May 28, 2025, at 7pm in the Japan Society headquarters (333 E 47th St, New York, NY).
For those who’ve never seen Ringu, or have only seen the American version of it directed by Gore Verbinski, this a magnificent opportunity to experience it in the best way possible: in a dark room with a big screen, witnessing the same terrifying things as everyone else around you at the same time.
The movie follows a journalist called Reiko Asakawa (played by Nanako Matsushima) who’s in the process of investigating a mysterious VHS tape that dooms whomever watches it to die seven days after. Finding the tape, she takes it home, where her son accidentally stumbles upon it and watches it. Along with her ex-husband, a psychic called Ryūji Takayama (played by Hiroyuki Sanada), Asakawa races to find some way to reverse the curse while also uncovering the secrets behind the tape’s existence.
The movie sticks close to the book, but not without taking certain liberties to become its own version of the original story. Asakawa is a man in the book and Ryūji (a university philosophy professor) has a more complicated and morally dubious relationship with the women in his life. There are also a few changes found in the images that live in the cursed tape. Despite that, Hideo Nakata finds ways to transfer the book’s essence to the big screen, especially in its portrayal of Sadako, the spirit that haunts the tape. Ringu gave rise to a horror icon the likes no one had seen before at a mainstream level.
Ringu is largely consider the movie responsible for leading the J-horror boom in America, opening the doors for movies such as Pulse, Ju-On: The Grudge, Shutter, and Dark Water, to name a few. It established an aesthetic that marked a whole generation of Japanese and American horror filmmaking. It all rode on the book’s massive success, though, which spanned even more adaptations and sequels in Japan over the years. The novel was followed by two sequels that delved more into the science of the tape and how it could absorb or become an extension of a malignant spirit, Spiral (1995) and Loop (1998).
Tickets are going fast for this one. Make sure to head over to the Japan Society website for more information. It looks to be a very special night for fans of the series and horror aficionados in general. Who knows, you might get a call right after the signing in which a raspy voice utters “seven days” before hanging up. For your sake, don’t let it go to voicemail. I don’t think Sadako would appreciate that.
