Norio Tsuruta

premonition

Another Japanese horror/thriller. The director of “Kakashi” and “Ringu 0” does not bring much news. There is no curse in “Yogen”, but people get premonitions in various ways, premonitions of things to come shortly, of course the premonitions are about people dying. The persons getting the premonitions get some kind of decease. “Yogen” has the typical Jap horror atmosphere, nice and gloomy, but here without extremely dark scenes or frights. To make the film more interesting (?) the end become all blurry with shifting viewpoints and storylines every three seconds. This does have some kind of function, but I don’t think it is too well done. Oh well, “Yogen” is a nice film, but like “Kakashi”, just nice, nothing special.

After the tremendous succes of “Ringu” (an American remake even!) there was a sequel “Ringu 2” which I have yet to see (but will within the next days) and after the sequel there was a “prequel” “Ringu 0”. Chronologically this film comes before the original. There are several Ringu books that the films are based on, so however all these sequels are very Hollywoodish it is still somehow bearable. “Ringu 2” is by the original director, but “Ringu 0” is by the director of the wonderfull “Kakashi” (see elsewhere), but I found that out after I saw it, so I didn’t have too high hopes when I watched this film.

But, Ringu 0 proves to be about as good as the original. Not so dark in filming, but the same dense atmosphere, dark sounds that makes you definately have to see this on DVD and a slow building-up towards a great ending. The story is that of the girl from the well/drain that caused the curse. You can see how this shy girl moves to Tokio, makes problems that she can’t help and how she ends in the drain. The film is wonderfully made that you keep wondering what how when and especially why upto the last minutes. If you liked the original, see this one, if you haven’t seen any “The Ring” yet, be sure to see the originals!