Thirty years before the events of Ringu, and eleven after anything of interest to audiences will happen, Sadako (Yukie Nakama), the evil ghost of the first film, is a meek, twenty-something-year-old who has joined an acting troop in Tokyo. She’s also followed by the visage of her evil self. People of no importance die, and the hyperactive troop all blame Sadako for no good reason. Some have seen the ghostly girl, but since she’s half the size of Sadako, and always has her face covered, there’s zero connection, but oh well, nothing else makes sense so why should that? Sound engineer Tôyama, who likes his women quiet, submissive, and nearly lacking in personality and thought, is naturally attracted to Sadako, and since no one else has ever said anything nice to her, she to him. Thus begins a really drab romance that can’t end well, since we all know that Sadako becomes rather unpleasant in three decades and has to be dead sometime in there.
More than anything else, a sequel should not harm the original. It should not contradict its theme, change plot elements that had carried us along, or alter how characters had been in that first film. It shouldn’t destroy an ending that we struggled with those characters to reach, and it shouldn’t tell us anything that could destroy the mystery that made the first picture haunt our dreams. Is that too much to ask? I’m not even asking for the sequel to make sense, tell an interesting story, or have any reason for existing—just not to mess up what’s already good. As for prequels, that goes double.
Ringu 0: Birthday is a prequel to Ringu, the film that started the J-horror movement and made horror frightening again. That it didn’t need a prequel I take as a given. That this prequel adds nothing was no surprise either. All it accomplishes is to bring Sadako into the light. Now, one of the things that made Ringu so frightening was the enigmatic nature of the ghost. Ringu 0 does its best to kill that, while simultaneously answering no questions. That took talent. It says nothing about Sadako’s mother’s suicide or how she came to curse a video tape. What we get is a story only vaguely related to the one in Ringu and a whole new group of magical powers. Sadako has split in half. Apparently using the transporter from Star Trek, she’s now made up of a good Sadako and an evil Sadako. The bad one’s been kept locked in a room with a TV and injected with drugs to keep her small (hmmm, what drugs would those be?), but she can astral project, which she does a lot so she can appear to walk across rooms ominously.
Still, if taken on its own, it isn’t a complete failure. It’s an improvement over the techno-gibberish-filled Ringu 2, and never made me snicker, which again, is a step in the right direction. The acting isn’t embarrassing and it’s shot as well as your average mid-budget picture. It’s never scary, but it doesn’t attempt to be. It’s hardly a horror movie. It is mainly a drama about a meek girl with a bad past and mental problems and her experiences with a guy who likes her and a whole bunch of mindless folks who hate her. That’s no brilliant drama, but it wouldn’t be bad except for one huge mistake: Sadako. She’s a milquetoast, little bird. She hasn’t got a flicker of life or self-determination. She’s attractive, but that’s it. Perhaps this flies better in Japan since I’ve seen similar characters in Asian films, though mostly in ones made four or five decades ago. If this was 1950, and you make a lot of statements around the house like, “barefoot or pregnant, that’s how I like my women,” then Sadako is your girl. I have no problem with a timid female character, but then I need someone else to hold my emotions. However, everybody else is slime. The reporter (who’s mad at Sadako because her even more reprehensible fiancée died eleven years ago while browbeating Sadako’s mother) and the members of the acting troop are several steps down the evolutionary ladder from the torch wielders marching up the road in Frankenstein. The boyfriend is too slightly written to matter, which leaves Sadako and she makes bunnies look fierce. Why should I care about her survival if she isn’t willing to do anything to aid it. She does stand a lot, looking down. Wow, the excitement.
The story takes place in one of those alternate worlds where no one ever calls the cops. The climax should never have happened because everyone would be in custody or at the station answering questions.
Although Ringu 0: Birthday is a better movie than Ringu 2, more effort should be put into avoiding it. Ringu 2 is too silly to detract from the original film, while Ringu 0 strips away a bit of the magic and leaves nothing in return.