Ring 0: Birthday

In Ring O, which takes place 30 years before the events of Ringu, we are introduced to Sadako Yamamura, a painfully shy young girl who is literally torn in two by her mysterious heritage. Sadako, haunted by frightening visions of ghosts and bloody omens of the future, is a tense and silent girl with an ethereal beauty. She has found happiness in a local drama troupe, despite the fact that few of her fellow actors like her - Sadako is too quiet, a little creepy, and always seems to have something "standing behind her" - something that no one can quite see. The cast of an upcoming play all begin to have similar dreams in which an old house, a forest by the sea and a crumbling well all make an appearance. When the star of the play dies unexpectedly, and Sadako is given her role, suspicion mounts. Odd occurrences plague the set, a news reporter with a secret agenda begins to investigate Sadako and Sadako herself falls in love with a handsome sound engineer named Toyama, the only one who believes that Sadako is innocent. But if she is, then what is causing the poltergeist activity in the theater? What is the source of the strange, eerie sound that everyone can hear? And whose voice said "You will die" on a recording made at the time of a young woman's death?

This is a strong entry in the Ringu series, more of a psychological drama than anything else. Sadako, like Carrie White, is a girl with no self-esteem, wandering through the film in dumpy clothes with her hair in her face. She is truly a good, sweet girl who is simply pushed too far at last. There are some creepy moments scattered through the film featuring grainy dream sequences, stricken corpses and a very creepy shot of Sadako's insane mother during a flashback. There's also a great climax featuring Sadako as we all remember her - hair in her face and clad in a long white dress - literally jumping into view and then creeping up on her two victims in a scene that was clearly shot backwards and then run forwards, giving her movements a hideous jerkiness. Yukie Nakama is very good as Sadako, giving us a tragic heroine who is good and pure and possesses the power to heal the sick. Your sympathy will lie with Sadako, even as her dark past is revealed. The good Sadako suffers unbearably and you will suffer with her, right up to the chilling, but inevitable, ending.

This is a must see for Ring fans. Very highly recommended.

This is a prequel which actually works and explains things rather than giving even more questions. You can argue weather the mystery of Sadako is better left untouched, but the fact still remains; this is a good movie.

The lead (Yukie Nakama as a shy Sadako) is very good, even though it's obvious she's a Japanese version of Carrie White; misunderstood, creepy and with gifts she never wanted. That's the only real problem with this movie; the original ring movie was just that; original. This movie however, get's inspiration from other sources, such as Carrie, and that removes some of it's power.

While it's not as moody as Ring, Ring 0 still has some very good horror scenes and some smart camera-work. Seeing a white shape just at the edge of the screen is much more effective than, for example, the killer's POV.

As with Ring, this is a bit slow but builds up to a good finale. There are no special effects really, and it's very down-to-earth, one of the qualities of this and Ring.

Finally, there's the fact that it's Japanese. There's something refreshing about seeing a movie in a different language, in different environments, in a different culture.

I recommend this movie to those who liked Ring. It's definitely a worthy prequel. 7/10

Shortly after an oddly quiet young woman, Sadako Yamamura (Yukie Nakama), joins a drama troupe, strange events, including deaths with suspicious circumstances, start occurring. Is Sadako somehow connected to these events? And what does it have to do with a reporter investigating a years-old tragedy at a psychic demonstration?

Series Note: There are many different films, television series, books, comic books, etc. based on the "Ring Universe", and it's very complicated trying to sort them out. The Japanese films known as "Ring" or "Ringu" can be numbered 0 (this one), 1 (Ringu, 1998) and 2 (Ringu 2, 1999), and function well as a self-contained story. This film, Ring 0: Birthday is a prequel. I prefer watching it first, but if you want more mystery in the other films, watch them in their release order: Ringu, Ringu 2, then Ringu 0. Note that there is also a Japanese film named Rasen (aka Spiral, 1998) which was meant to be a "Ring 2", but that was later superseded with the 1999 Ringu 2. Rasen is supposedly closer to the second Ring novel, but 1999's Ringu 2 is seen as more or less the "official" Ringu sequel.

There is an infamous mock commercial from the early days of "Saturday Night Live" (1975) about a product named "Shimmer". Shimmer was notable for being both a floor wax and a dessert topping. Ring 0 has Sadako as a Shimmer-like entity. Only, instead of being just two kinds of things, she's six--a telekinetic, a psychic, a precognizant, a ghost, a psychic healer, and a physical manifestation of a split personality. The film overall has a Shimmer-like quality, too. It's both a horror film and a slow, realistic drama with romance overtones. The horror stuff generally works, although Sadako would have benefited from not having so many functions. The more serious dramatic sections, which take up almost an hour of this 90-minute film, are not quite as successful.

The script, by Hiroshi Takahashi, from a story by Ring novelist Koji Suzuki, is admirable on an artistic level. Takahashi is fond of parallelism, setting up the drama troupe's rehearsals and performance as an innocuous veil that often matches more sinister events beneath the surface. He frequently changes our perspective so that we see a stage performer scream, say, at the same time someone offstage should be screaming. These kinds of parallels can be found throughout the film.

The problem is that director Norio Tsuruta just cannot get much momentum going with the material. The dramatic rehearsals and backstage bickering that take up a large percentage of screen-time just aren't that eventful or exciting. There are glimpses, through Sadako or around her, of a more intriguing world, but they're often little more than "flashes" that might cause us to do a double take. Takahashi and Tsuruta work hard to establish a romance subplot involving a love triangle (or two), but this can barely get off the ground. It often feels superfluous.

The best material featuring Sadako in the earlier part of the film resembles something of a cross between a Hitchcockian thriller and Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976). But those are overly generous comparisons, since at least the first hour of Ring 0 has little of the suspense, style or directorial panache of either.

I would have preferred a stronger focus on Shoko Miyaji (Yoshiko Tanaka), the reporter who is trying to investigate the psychic demonstration tragedy. Her scenes, which tend to have the flavor of a police procedural with slight horror twinges, are entertaining, and a larger focus on her would have broken up play rehearsal scenes better. It would have also given the character more weight for the climax, which would have given the ending even greater impact.

As it stands, the last half hour is still the best part. We finally unravel much of the mystery behind Sadako (although there are a lot of questions that could still be answered), and gain insight into some of the events and comments in the first two-thirds of the film, which otherwise can seem cryptic (it pays to rewatch the first hour after the film is over--I enjoyed it more the second time).

There are a number of events during the climax that are breathtaking in their brutality, all nicely scripted and directed. One of these, when two characters are enigmatically killed off-screen, is a rare example of an "attack scene" where I agree that what you're not shown can be more effective than what you are shown. We get to see the event leading right up to the death, and we see the bloody aftermath. Filming how it happened would have drained much of its mystique. Another outstanding development in the climax is rooted in the relationship between two characters, and works so well because of strong cultural taboos.

While it's probably my least favorite Ring-related film, Ring 0 is worth viewing because of its place in the series and the excellent climax.

Combining elements of drama and horror, Ring 0 is a very worthy installation of the indie horror franchise. This film really starts, though, as a drama, telling us the story of Sadako in a very linear fashion (which, deliciously, has become the more difficult and confusing path to take, since we already know the end of the story). We see Sadako as a human (!) who is not scary or evil at all but actually seems rather pleasant and almost painfully shy. A while later in the film, we see that Sadako is actually warring desperately with herself . . . and is losing. Her eventual slide into the monstrosity of the first and second Ring films is a sight to behold (and, hardcore fans will note, is echoed by a similar fall of Ando Mitsuo in the less popular Rasen).

The social overtones of this film are also outstanding and a fine addition to the series. Whereas the first two films are more exercises in combining psychological terror with techno-horror, Ring 0 takes a more Romero-esque approach to the social aspect of Sadako's transformation, meditating on the cruelty of her peers and the burning need for revenge of one journalist that brings the whole tragedy crashing down.

Incidentally, although it takes some time, this film WILL scare the hell out of you at the end. Just wait for it.

Very, very good. See it.

After the original Ringu, there were many people who tried to ride the horror wave. Not much unlike the known Hollywood tradition, the Japanese film industry made many horror movies in the same vein, as is this prequel to the original Ringu.

This is one of the better movies to come out of the many copy-cats that followed the success of Ringu. It does tell you the story of the girl that lead her to become what she is (or was) in the Ringu movie, when you saw her. So if you've watched Ringu, you do know where this movie is going. Still it is more than interesting and engaging to see the journey of her! I don't know how it would feel if you'd watch this movie before Ringu, but one thing is for sure, if you like Ringu, you should watch this one too! It stays true to the original premise!