導演：中田秀夫

主演：松島菜菜子 中谷美紀 真田廣之

類型：驚悚/恐怖/ 懸疑

上映日期：1998年1月31日 日本

推薦指數：★★★★

劇情介紹

有這樣一個傳言：看過一盒神秘影帶后，你會收到一個電話，預言 你將于七天后死亡。女記者雷切爾不相信這們荒謬的傳言，直到四名青少年離奇死亡，巧合的是他們在死前七天都看過一盒錄影帶，她決定去探查究竟。經過追查，她發現這不單是個傳言，而是一個詛咒，但她始料不及的是這詛咒到她兒子及前夫身上。七日期限，詛咒能否破解？錄影帶背后是否暗藏契機？性命可否確保？

推薦理由

日韓的恐怖片不同于西方的血腥恐怖片，更注重的是環境和心理的描寫。而西方的則是科學的計算(代表作“電鋸驚魂”“異元次殺陣”“九人禁閉室”)加上血腥的鏡頭，能看出歐美的人重視科學理論和視覺刺激，而忽視心理和環境的描寫。

Plot summary

Ringu is a 1998 Japanese horror mystery film by Hideo Nakata, adapted from the novel of the same name by Koji Suzuki, which draws from the Japanese folk tale Banchō Sarayashiki. The film stars Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, and Rikiya Otaka as members of a divorced family, each cursed by a videotape. The film was later remade in the United States as The Ring (2002).

The film is the highest grossing horror film in Japan at 15.9 billion yen ($137.7 million) and is also considered the most frightening horror film in Japan according to the investigation of Oricon.

Ringu is a film about a cursed, disturbing videotape that, when watched, will cause the viewer to die a week after.

The film begins with two teenagers, Masami (Hitomi Sato) and Tomoko (Yuko Takeuchi) talking about a videotape recorded by a boy in Izu which is fabled to bear a curse that kills the viewer seven days after watching. Tomoko then reveals that a week ago, she and three of her friends watched a weird tape and received a call after watching it. Unnervingly similar to the storied videotape, Masami realizes that Tomoko was fated to die. After some unsettling moments, Tomoko is killed by an unseen force with Masami having the horror of watching.

Some days later, Asakawa Reiko (Nanako Matsushima), a reporter investigating the popularity of the video curse among teenagers, discovers that her niece, Tomoko and her three other friends mysteriously died at the same time on the same night with their faces twisted in a rictus of fear. She also discovers that Masami, the girl who was with Tomoko when she died, went crazy and is now in a mental hospital. After stumbling upon Tomoko's photos from the past week, Reiko finds out that the four teenagers stayed in a rental cabin in Izu. Eventually, she flips to a photo of the teens with their faces blurred and distorted.

Later, Reiko goes to Izu and finds an unlabeled tape in the reception room of the rental cottage where the teenagers stayed. Watching the tape inside Cabin B4, Reiko sees the tape containing a series of seemingly unrelated disturbing images. As soon as the tape is over, Reiko receives a phone call, a realization of the tell-tale videotape curse. Then on, she now assumes that she has a week to live. On the first day, Reiko enlists the help of her ex-husband, Ryuji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada). They take a picture of Reiko and find her face blurred in the photograph, further confirming that Reiko really was cursed. Ryuji, then watches the tape, against Reiko's objections. A day later, Reiko creates a copy for Ryuji for them to study. They find a hidden message embedded within the tape saying that "if you keep on doing 'shoumon', the 'boukon' will come for you." The message is in a form of dialect from Izu Oshima Island. The two sail for Oshima (after Asakawa's son watches the videotape) and discover the history of the great psychic Shizuko Yamamura.

With only a day left, Reiko and Ryuji discovered that Shizuko's lost daughter, Sadako, must have made the videotape. Determined, the two go back to Izu with the assumption that Sadako is dead and it was her vengeful spirit that killed the teenagers. The duo then uncover a well under Cabin B4 and realize, through a vision, that Sadako's father killed her and threw her into the well. They try to empty the well and find Sadako's body in an attempt to appease her spirit. Reiko finds Sadako's body. When nothing happens to her, they believe that the curse is broken.

All seems fine until the next day when Ryuji is at his home and his tv switches on by itself showing the image of a well. He stares in horror as the ghost of Sadako crawls out of the well and out of Ryuji's TV set and kills him. Desperate to find a cure to save her son, Reiko realized what she did that Ryuji didn't, thus saving her: She copied the tape and showed it to him. With a VCR and Ryuji's copy of the tape, Reiko rides to her son in attempt to save him, realizing that this is a never-ending cycle: The tape must always be copied and passed on to ensure the survival of the viewers.

（Source: wikipedia.org，英語點津Julie編輯）