In 1998, director Hideo Nakata (Dark Water) unleashed a chilling tale of technological terror on unsuspecting audiences, which redefined the horror genre, launched the J-horror boom in the West and introducing a generation of moviegoers to a creepy, dark-haired girl called Sadako. The film's success spawned a slew of remakes, reimaginations and imitators, but none could quite boast the power of Nakata's original masterpiece, which melded traditional Japanese folklore with contemporary anxieties about the spread of technology.
A group of teenage friends are found dead, their bodies grotesquely contorted, their faces twisted in terror. Reiko (Nanako Matsushima, When Marnie Was There), a journalist and the aunt of one of the victims, sets out to investigate the shocking phenomenon, and in the process uncovers a creepy urban legend about a supposedly cursed videotape, the contents of which causes anyone who views it to die within a week - unless they can persuade someone else to watch it, and, in so doing, pass on the curse...
Arrow is proud to present Ringu, the film that started it all, restored from the original negative in glorious high definition.
Up Next in Horror Movie Survival Guide Selects
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Things to Come
1976 • United States • Directed by Derek Todd
A future dystopia dream-epic shot in San Antonio, THINGS TO COME finds Julie leaving her marriage to investigate a mysterious sci-fi cult on behalf of frustrated women everywhere. With a soundtrack that feels like it was cribbed from A CLOCKWORK ORAN...
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Blind Beast
1969 • Japan • Directed by Yasuzô Masumura
Blind Beast is a grotesque portrait of the bizarre relationship between a blind sculptor and his captive muse, adapted from a short story from Japan’s foremost master of the macabre, Edogawa Rampo (Horrors of Malformed Men, The Black Lizard, Caterpilla...
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Horrors of Malformed Men
Medical student Hirosuke Hitomi slips out of the asylum in which he has been wrongfully confined and stealthily assumes the identity of a recently deceased nobleman with whom he bears an uncanny resemblance. Hirosuke eases his way into the nobleman's household and his dead double's marital bed. B...
