I heard a lot about this movie, and what I heard 99% of the people who saw it say most often was that it scared the living &^%$ out of them. It's kind of hard to track down in the US (you may have better luck just buying a used copy of the VCD over the net than you would have finding a video store that has it in stock) but worth it. It's not available officially on VHS format at the time of this writing, which upon reflection, is probably wise due to the storyline. I don't know if this is the scariest movie I've ever seen, but it's definitely up there in my top 10. Also, it's probably the movie in my top list of scariest movies with virtually no gore.
The plot centers on a reporter who investigates what could possible be a video tape with a 'curse' on it. Yeah, I know that sounds ludicrous, but the way the story is laid out, it doesn't turn out that way. It starts with two teenage girls talking about the VHS videotape, one telling the other a sort of urban legend (anything involving an urban legend scares the hell out of me right there-I think I heard too many of them at slumber parties as a kid and was permanently warped). Anyone who watches the tape, then gets a phone call (we never hear what the voice on the other end of the phone says exactly) telling them they will die in a week. So far, everyone who has seen it has died in exactly a week. And guess what? One of the girls saw it slightly less than a week ago! One dies, and the other goes incurably insane. One of the girls is the main character's niece, so she and another journalist (who I think was her ex-husband- the English subtitles were pretty badly translated in parts, but you get the idea) have a week to track down the source and try to stop things before the next Sunday evening.
There's plenty of big jolts and scares in the movie-times where I really jumped. That's scary enough, but what's more frightening is the creepy sense of dread you get as the movie goes on. It's filled with extreme suspense as well- captions show the days counting down and their time they have left ticking away. The dread was the worst-there are quite a few very creepy images, such as those shown on the videotape itself. You have a horrible feeling you're going to see something you really, really would rather not see very soon, but you can't stop watching. This is a good one to watch with the lights off, though I am very glad my husband was asleep on the couch next to me.
There's a scene towards the end where the two main characters must bail water out of an abandoned well in an area that is already dark and creepy. One of them, of course, has to be lowered down into the well (which is somewhere you *really* don't want them to go, but they have to) to fill the bucket, and I actually had to wake my husband up to hold my hand only about 20 seconds into the scene. That scene is wonderfully filmed and edited. You have the nail-biting suspense when the clock is ticking for the characters to bail out the deep well as quickly as possible to find what they need to, yet you also REALLY don't want to see what is at the bottom, so along with the suspense there's the creeping dread.
Unfortunately I read a review that gave away the TV scene at the film's climax, but it still made every hair on my body stand on end. Jesus! I'm a grown woman who has seen some pretty hideous, frightening movies, but I still spent at least the last half of the movie curling up into a smaller and smaller ball and covering my eyes in parts. The story-line is clever yet simple, with a couple of twists, the scenes are beautifully filmed, the cinematography is gorgeous, the editing and pacing are perfect, and the acting is also pretty impressive. The score is great-I had to keep lowering the sound during the movie because it was giving my cat (and me) the creeps so badly. It also says a lot when a movie can scare you this bad without virtually any blood, gore, or the popular sudden-discovery-of-a-mangled- corpse effect.
I really can't think of anything negative to say, other than to see this movie before the American remake/version comes out and probably completely screws it up. Younger viewers who only have seen those teen slasher pics and expect every horror movie to be exactly like that, may just not get it. Either that, or they'll realize what they've been missing. Viewers that get bored unless there's not slam-bang action and over-the-top gore every other scene...I just feel sorry for them because they will probably get impatient and turn the movie off after 20 minutes and miss out. If you want that kind of movie,(not that there's anything wrong with that) rent TerrorFirmer or something instead. But if you don't fall into either of the above categories, like a well-made, atmospheric movie and want to have the hell scared out of you slowly but surely, see Ring.
The plot centers on a reporter who investigates what could possible be a video tape with a 'curse' on it. Yeah, I know that sounds ludicrous, but the way the story is laid out, it doesn't turn out that way. It starts with two teenage girls talking about the VHS videotape, one telling the other a sort of urban legend (anything involving an urban legend scares the hell out of me right there-I think I heard too many of them at slumber parties as a kid and was permanently warped). Anyone who watches the tape, then gets a phone call (we never hear what the voice on the other end of the phone says exactly) telling them they will die in a week. So far, everyone who has seen it has died in exactly a week. And guess what? One of the girls saw it slightly less than a week ago! One dies, and the other goes incurably insane. One of the girls is the main character's niece, so she and another journalist (who I think was her ex-husband- the English subtitles were pretty badly translated in parts, but you get the idea) have a week to track down the source and try to stop things before the next Sunday evening.
There's plenty of big jolts and scares in the movie-times where I really jumped. That's scary enough, but what's more frightening is the creepy sense of dread you get as the movie goes on. It's filled with extreme suspense as well- captions show the days counting down and their time they have left ticking away. The dread was the worst-there are quite a few very creepy images, such as those shown on the videotape itself. You have a horrible feeling you're going to see something you really, really would rather not see very soon, but you can't stop watching. This is a good one to watch with the lights off, though I am very glad my husband was asleep on the couch next to me.
There's a scene towards the end where the two main characters must bail water out of an abandoned well in an area that is already dark and creepy. One of them, of course, has to be lowered down into the well (which is somewhere you *really* don't want them to go, but they have to) to fill the bucket, and I actually had to wake my husband up to hold my hand only about 20 seconds into the scene. That scene is wonderfully filmed and edited. You have the nail-biting suspense when the clock is ticking for the characters to bail out the deep well as quickly as possible to find what they need to, yet you also REALLY don't want to see what is at the bottom, so along with the suspense there's the creeping dread.
Unfortunately I read a review that gave away the TV scene at the film's climax, but it still made every hair on my body stand on end. Jesus! I'm a grown woman who has seen some pretty hideous, frightening movies, but I still spent at least the last half of the movie curling up into a smaller and smaller ball and covering my eyes in parts. The story-line is clever yet simple, with a couple of twists, the scenes are beautifully filmed, the cinematography is gorgeous, the editing and pacing are perfect, and the acting is also pretty impressive. The score is great-I had to keep lowering the sound during the movie because it was giving my cat (and me) the creeps so badly. It also says a lot when a movie can scare you this bad without virtually any blood, gore, or the popular sudden-discovery-of-a-mangled- corpse effect.
I really can't think of anything negative to say, other than to see this movie before the American remake/version comes out and probably completely screws it up. Younger viewers who only have seen those teen slasher pics and expect every horror movie to be exactly like that, may just not get it. Either that, or they'll realize what they've been missing. Viewers that get bored unless there's not slam-bang action and over-the-top gore every other scene...I just feel sorry for them because they will probably get impatient and turn the movie off after 20 minutes and miss out. If you want that kind of movie,(not that there's anything wrong with that) rent TerrorFirmer or something instead. But if you don't fall into either of the above categories, like a well-made, atmospheric movie and want to have the hell scared out of you slowly but surely, see Ring.