Below is a link to the opening of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998), the film that more than any other led to the international spread of Japanese horror at the turn of the 21st century. While you likely haven’t seen the movie as a whole, how would you say this clip introduces the viewer to the horror that follows? How does this opening compare to the opening scenes of late-twentieth-century slasher movies such as Halloween that we’ve discussed in class.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QX0IBoYEYckXkqDZSoGBYE-ygRV3O1pg/view?usp=drive_link
The audience is unsettled from before the pre-movie credits are finished. The eerie soundtrack and random flashes of images connotes a sense of uneasiness, directly juxtaposed by two girls having fun at a playdate of sorts. While the ghost story that one friend told the other was something the audience was expected to find amusing for the first three minutes, it essentially lays the plot of the movie out. There is a haunted video tape, a phone call, and death after a week. The audience now knows that any time a tv turns on or a phone rings, evil could be lurking near. While I have yet to see the rest of the movie, it appears as though this first scene is meant to introduce the horror and start off with a bang, and then the rest of the movie may take place with different characters but the same evil. Unlike some of the movies we’ve seen thus far, there is almost no plot building before the first death takes place. It jumps right into it, much like Halloween and other slashers of the time period.
The clip introduces the horror that follows as a ghost story at a sleepover. Technology plays such an important role with the television and the phone. We start with water, something that will continue to be important in the rest of the film (the well). It also cements the idea of Ringu as an Okiku ghost story. Dissolving into TV static is eerie and brings this old ghostly legend to the present day: the idea of the technoghost emerges. Throughout the girls’ conversation, the viewer’s expectations are continuously subverted, first with the sudden horror from the girl who says she saw this VHS, then diffused as a joke, then heightened with the phone call, diffused by the fact that it was the mom calling, then finally suspended again with the final sequence with the television. The girl was telling the truth, after all. She did see the VHS. This sequence introduces the ghost, its legend and how it operates. It is likely that these characters are expendable. We probably won’t see them again. They serve for exposition.
Compared to late-20th century slasher films, the opening of Ringu is extremely subtle. It is not from the perspective of the killer. It is framed in a playful horror story. There is no gore, no shock. The clip simply builds suspense through the viewer’s expectations, largely driven by dramatic irony. The viewer knows that the characters are in a horror film. The characters do not. Similar to slasher films, the girl is killed because she did something “wrong.” She hooked up with a guy the previous week. In slashers, this is a telltale sign that she will be the killer’s next victim, almost inevitably so.
The opening scene of Hideo Nakata’s “Ringu” (1998) sets a mysterious and eerie tone, introducing the audience to two unusual tools of horror: a telephone and a television. One girl recounts her experience watching the tape and receiving a phone call with a disturbing message, predicting her death in seven days. The atmosphere in the opening scene is tense and unsettling, and it establishes a sense of foreboding that permeates the rest of the movie. The use of low lighting, ambient sound, and the eerie imagery on the videotape creates an immediate feeling of unease. The supernatural element is introduced subtly, leaving much to the imagination and sparking curiosity about the nature of the curse.
Compared to the openings of many slasher movies, “Ringu” takes a more nuanced and cerebral approach. For example, in the opening scene of “Halloween” (1978), the consequences of the horror are already visible. The audience sees a bloody dead body, and there is little fear felt afterwards. In comparison to “Ringu”, the slasher genre seems overeager to show the gore of killing and the nature of the killer. In Ringu, neither the gore nor the killer is exposed. This sets the stage for psychological aspects to drive the narrative, which I find to be more fear inducing.
The opening scene introduces the monster of the movie in a very clever way, by telling a ghost story. The scene being set is something most people can probably relate to: hanging out with your friends and joking around about some urban legend that’s recently grabbed the attention of the local youths, mostly just trying to get a rise out of each other. It’s innocent, but because this is the very first scene it makes it clear from the beginning that this is likely what the movie is going to be centered around, a haunted tape. It does a very good job in setting up the horror that will follow in the remainder of the film.
Although I haven’t seen the whole movie, the opening scene creates a very eery and suspenseful atmosphere that hints at the horror and leaves the viewers guessing what it could be. It does a great job of engaging and piquing the audience’s engagement in the film and posing a question for the audience in this opening scene. It also foreshadows the possible source of the horror and what is to come to the rest of the people who end up watching that tape, but we are still left in the dark as to who or what is responsible for the deaths. There is something very supernatural about the explanations and themes present in the opening scene that also adds to the eeriness of the scene. Compared to late 20th-century slasher movies, the Ring creates a much more subtle and suspenseful introduction to horror, emphasizing the atmosphere and story development that slowly builds tension. On the opposite end, Halloween begins very slowly and tension-building. Still, it is immediately followed by the violent killing of his sister and creates a more immediate sense of physical danger or threat. Another significant difference between the two movie styles is that The Ring creates more of a supernatural and incomprehensible horror that makes a sense of dread and inevitability of what is to come. The horror is about what we cannot comprehend, and our imagination starts to build the horror. In slasher films like Halloween, we are given a much more human or at least grounded in the physical world and a physical threat. The horror then turns to anticipation and suspense about when it will occur.