Tag: Ghost Story

2 – The Old Ways are the Best (Ring – 1998)

The sound of silence greets you as you awake, a sliver of sunlight cutting across your eyes like a bright scar. You slept well, despite the muffled sounds of singing from the rooms below going on well into the night. After freshening up you head down to the bar area where you are greeted by a thin, middle aged man with a thick black beard and deep set green eyes.

Good morning friend, I am Gregor, the landlord. I hope your night was a pleasant one, no bad dreams, no tap tap tapping at the chamber door?

Excellent! Breakfast will be served once my daughter Willa returns from the well, if you’re hungry you may wish to give her a hand, it’s out back, can’t miss it.

At the far end of the Inn’s rear garden you see a young dark haired lady in a light summer dress, its geometric pattern reminds you of the 70s, all oranges and browns. She turns quickly at your approach.

Oh! You startled me! You must be our new guest, and come to help with the fetching of the water, very good of you. I’m Willa, and this is our well, deep, dark, and full of history, as well as water. Sometimes when I’m bringing up the bucket I fancy the weight of the water is something holding onto the other end, wanting to come up. A girl can dream. Here now, help me with this water and I’ll get some breakfast going for you.

No, no, you’ve done more than enough already, go sit in the lounge area, put your feet up, breakfast won’t be long. Why don’t you read a book or watch a videotape, hah yes VHS, after all, the old ways are the best, don’t you think?

I would imagine that today’s film needs little introduction, after all, we’ve all seen this film, right, it was huge? Perhaps not…which version have you seen? Just Gore Verbinski’s 2002 version? If so, then you haven’t seen this film. Today we are reviewing Hideo Nakata’s 1998 film, リング or Ringu (Hepburn romanization), or Ring.

Not in fact the first film adaptation, that title goes to Chisui Takigawa’s 1995 version made for TV in Japan, but the 1998 version was the first theatrically released.

All three of the films above are based on Koji Suzuki’s 1991 novel, called unsurprisingly Ring.

The story follows a reporter, Reiko, who is looking into the mysterious deaths of a group of teenagers, all of whom have watched a supposedly cursed videotape. The urban legend states that anybody who watches the tape will die exactly 7 days later. As Reiko discovers more and more about the tape and its contents, the stakes become increasingly high.

The two main protagonist, Reiko and her ex husband Ryūji, are excellent, they come across very natural and you can believe there was once something between them. It’s really these two who hold the film together as we discover the story behind the cursed tape and feel their increasing urgency as time goes on.

I should also mention their young son Yoichi who somehow manages to be super creepy but cute at the same time, perhaps due to Reiko’s questionable parenting.

The Ring franchise became synonymous with scary movies, I remember at the time it was becoming well known it was considered one of the scariest, if not the scariest film out there. So, is it? Or more specifically is this particular Ring film scary? Well it’s hard to look at this film through the eyes of a late 90’s, early 2000’s viewer. Is it scary? Yes, it has an excellent premise, making an everyday mundane object into something that can kill, and the way in which it does this is again some grade A fear inducing stuff. Is it the scariest film? No, certainly not by 2022, but even back in in the early 2000’s it was surpassed in shear fear factor by fellow Japanese film Ju-On: The Grudge, to name but one, my opinion of course.

What Ring is however is a film which influenced a generation and opened many peoples eyes here in ‘The West’ to the horror films of other nations and the Asian horror scene in particular, even if it was often through Hollywood remakes. Their popularity and the burgeoning internet had people seeking out the originals of many of these films, and if Ring was one of those, then they wouldn’t have been disappointed.

I’ve been lucky enough with my random number generation (I swear, my collection has some real stinkers) to have two good films for my first two reviews. So you know now that I think it’s good, but how good? Well, as much as I would like to give Ring full marks, I just can’t quite do it. The main characters are great, the concept is compelling and creepy, and the film has an inevitability and urgency about it, but yet it does this, whilst somehow feeling too slow at times. I also felt a bit of a disconnect with the other characters we learn about surrounding the tape and its origins. I didn’t know enough about them, to really care about them, which is a shame and is something which I felt would have lifted the film.

Therefore I’m going to award Ring, 4 Towels out of 5. This is a great horror film. Creepy, suspenseful and ultimately important.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad.

At this point in time I have yet to see the Gore Verbinski version, I watched the 1998 film way back in the early 2000’s but never saw the remake. Perhaps it’s that film that people are referring to with regards how scary it is, or maybe it’s just early 2000’s sensibilities, because although I found it creepy there wasn’t anything that terrified me. Of course the iconic scene where the girl Sadako emerges from the TV is excellent and the jerky way she moves disturbing but perhaps I have been spoilt by the similar scenes in Ju-On: The Grudge. The scariest part of the film for me was when they were in the well looking for Sadako’s corpse. The idea of feeling around in the dark, in stagnant well water, looking for a dead girl just gives me strong nope vibes and was one of the highlights of the film.

I wasn’t a fan of the inverted colours bits to represent characters being killed by Sadako, it felt a bit gimmicky and my personal feeling is that they should have just had the characters scream then cut to the next scene.

I’ll expand a little on my feeling that I didn’t care enough about Sadako and her mother Shizuko. We discover that both Sadako and her mother had some level of psychic ability. Sadako’s father Dr. Heihachiro Ikuma exploited Shizuko’s abilities but the resultant negative media reports drove her to commit suicide. Sadako herself was much more powerful, even killing a man who called her mother a fraud. She was ultimately killed by being thrown down a well by her own father.

So we have a mother committing suicide (By jumping into a volcano of all things) and a young girl murdered by her own father, surely that makes for some emotional scenes right? Well, not really, we don’t ever really meet them, it’s like we are reading about them in a book, it all feels very detached. This is where the film could have really been improved for me, If I had cared about Sadako in particular and then discovered her fate then this film would have been a 5 for me.

This spoiler section seems very negative but honestly it’s all relatively minor. This film is so influential to the genre that I felt I had to go into more detail about why it didn’t get top marks.

The scene where Reiko awakes to find her son watching the tape is where the film really picks up. For me, less to do with Yoichi being involved in the curse, again he’s a character we don’t spend a huge amount of time with, but because it raises the stakes for Reiko and Ryūji. They’re now fighting not only for them but for their son, and their increased desperation adds to the emotion of the subsequent scenes.

The reveal that Reiko and Ryūji, were wrong about the way to end the curse was excellent. The whole time that Sadako is emerging from the TV to kill Ryūji you’re saying to yourself, why? He tried just as hard as Reiko, surely Sadako isn’t that petty! This is the death you care about, it all feels so unfair! We discover that an earlier scene where Reiko made a copy of the tape and showed Ryūji is what saved her, you have to make a copy and to show somebody else, therefore keeping the curse going.

As the film ends and Reiko drives towards her father’s house, video player at her side, asking him for a favour, we’re left wondering, who is going to be the sacrifice? Her father? A great end, to a great film.

1 – Welcome to Summerisle (The Orphanage)

As you step onto the moss covered dock, a woman in archaic Victorian garb approaches you. Her dark blonde hair falls to her shoulders in curls and her eyes, a piercing blue framed by dark shadow, stare intently into your own.

Welcome weary traveller, welcome to our beautiful island. I am Lady Summerisle.

How was your journey? Not everyone enjoys flying, and fewer still a landing on the water, but it really is the only way, the mists, you see.

Your room is prepared at The Green Man, our finest Inn, and a hot meal of local fare; and then a welcome rest in a comfy chair and a tipple of your choice, you shall not want for anything. You are, after all, our guest.

Now you are fed and watered and sat cosy by the fire. I hope you will indulge me. I’d like to tell you a story, a ghost story. Do you believe in ghosts? I do hope so, for this story is true, and it happened right here on this island. Out on the west coast, near the lighthouse, was a home for little boys and girls with no parents of their own. Now you wouldn’t think there’d be many children like that on an island this size, but you’d be wrong, or at least you would have been…

Come, bring your chair a little closer to the fire, that’s it. Are you ready? Good.

Despite my love for all things horror, the creepy and the spooky, I’m a sceptic when it comes to ghosts and spirits. I’m not flat out disbelieving in them, and don’t dismiss people when they’ve had their own experiences. Having said that it did seem a little like fate when The Orphanage, the film which less than 24 hours earlier I had taken from the shelf, placed on the sofa beside me, but ultimately not watched, was the film chosen by random number generation out of a possible 94.

Now the only question is, was fate, or the spirits, being kind?

The Orphanage, or El Orfanato, directed by J. A. Bayona, is a Spanish film released in 2007. It follows the lives of Laura, Carlos and their 7 year old son Simón. They have moved into the abandoned orphanage where Laura grew up and they plan to re-open it as a home for disabled children. Simón has the active imagination of a child with no playmates, he makes his own, but are his imaginary friends just that, or something more?

I’m going to leave it at that as far as a synopsis, the back of the box goes into more detail but it’s difficult to say much about the film’s story without spoiling it.

The acting in this film is excellent, the characters feel real and their relationship to each other feels natural. Belén Rueda, who plays Laura, is particularly great and makes you feel every emotion. The atmosphere, from the fantastic location, to the cinematography, to the music, does an equally good job of making you smile, or creeping you out, as it does at making you cry, something which I do very rarely but did watching this as it has some truly upsetting moments.

I found The Orphanage to be one of those rare films that had me thinking about it for days afterwards. It’s very affecting, something which many horror films fail at. If you’re looking for a Boo! Ghosts! story then this probably isn’t the film you’re looking for. It’s described as a ghost story, and it has its fair share of the supernatural, but ultimately I would describe it more as a psychological horror, concentrating on the themes of loss and grief. This is what makes The Orphanage a true horror film, it’s all too real at times.

I’m pleased to be able to say that The Orphanage is not just one of the best horror films I’ve seen, it’s one of the best films. I like it when a film has an impact on my thoughts outside of its runtime, this certainly did. Part of me felt unsure about the high score I’m about to award this, it is the first film after all, but no, this isn’t about awarding half marks and it isn’t about comparing films to one another, it’s about how I feel about a particular film. Therefore, in the spirit of, and entirely influenced by, Adam Pranica, I’m going to award this film a score out of 5 of something representing this film.

The Orphanage receives 5 Seashells out of a possible 5. Maximum points! As a horror fan, or just a fan of films in general, you owe it to yourselves to watch this.

**WARNING** SPOILERS BELOW **WARNING**

Welcome to the spoiler section. This is the part where I can bring up some specific parts of the film which I’d like to talk about more, whether they be good, or bad. I’m generally going to keep these sections to a similar length as the main review rather than going over everything that happens.

One of the first big reveals in this film is the fact that Simón is ill, and not with a disease you might expect for a 7 year old, he has HIV. It never explains how he contracted it, but that’s also not particularly relevant to the story. It seems to be there to heighten the tension when he goes missing as he’s supposed to take medication every day, so every day they don’t find him is a day he is becoming sicker. It also fits with the idea that those close to death are closer to spirits and so see them when others don’t, though advances in medicine perhaps make this less effective than at the time of release.

I felt they did a great job with the supernatural side of the film, it’s never too overblown and manages to keep it at a level where, should you wish, you can perceive it as a manifestation of grief rather than actual spirits.

An honourable mention goes to excellent creepy old lady Benigna who does a great job of being extremely suspicious and odd, right before she’s mown down in one of the most unexpected and surprisingly gruesome scenes, but then as it turns out she murdered a bunch of kids so we’re not too torn up about it.

What did leave me torn up was the big reveal when Laura finally finds Simón. In a somewhat hidden basement Laura finds Simón, still dressed as he was at the party 9 months ago, dead and somewhat decomposed. She realises with horror that he had been hiding down here and during her frantic search for him, Laura had pushed some heavy supports up against the only exit, trapping him down there. Laura had heard her Son’s desperate attempts to get out, before hearing the crash of him falling to his death from the staircase, we witness the earlier scene from Laura’s point of view and at the time we, like her, think it’s ghosts making the noises. This…this was the scene that truly made this a film I’ll remember for a long time, the absolute anguish, leading to her subsequent suicide, of Laura realising she had inadvertently killed her own son. That, is true horror.