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Connections, in both directions

Carrie poster
Needless to say, it's overwritten, carefully enunciated in the hollow cadence of an M. Night Shyamalan supernatural soaper, and gruellingly mawkish in a ridiculous visit to one of those sanatoriums where Sissy Spacek appears in a hilarious cameo (channelling Carrie screen mom Piper Laurie's feverish religiosity), telling Rachel to be a good mommy and kill her possessed kiddo because, hell, that worked so great with bad seed Samara, right?
Film Freak Central
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Further to that end, Nakata enlists Sissy Spacek to play Samara's institutionalized mother, which ranks as one of the most inspired casting choices in horror movie history; who else but Carrie herself could portray the nutjob who cast out her daughter and later indirectly led generations of other mommies to attempt infanticide?
Todd Gilchrist • IGN
archive.org ↗
The first film introduced us to her abusive adoptive parents, and this time we get to meet her birth mother (Sissy Spacek in "Carrie" mode).
Josh Larsen • Chicago Tribune - Suburban Chicago News • Mar 17, 2005
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Us poster
Hats off, too, to choreographer and movement consultant Madeline Hollander for bringing a shiversome physicality to the shadow roles that recalls the creepiest moments from Hideo Nakata’s Ringu .
Mark Kermode, www.theguardian.com • The Guardian • Mar 24, 2019
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Psycho poster
Ringu, meanwhile, makes slier tributes to Hitch (Verbinski apes Arbogast's murder in Psycho in The Ring's prologue and later has Rachel rent out "cabin twelve," but Nakata latches onto Hitchcock's compulsion to date-stamp scenes (Verbinski opts for a simplified "Day One," "Day Two" approach)), avoids Sixth Sense -isms (acknowledging of course that Ringu came before M. Night Shyamalan's crowd-pleaser, the Rachel equivalent's son in Ringu is not psychic, though her ex-husband has the less-than-honed gift of ESP--the device, alas, doesn't amount to much in either film), and achieves a creepier ghost-emerging-from-the-idiot-box effect by shooting it in reverse, giving Ringu's Sadako a truly otherworldly walk.
Film Freak Central
archive.org ↗
Come True poster
Come True also exploits the patchy, out-of-focus “reception” these scientists receive while monitoring Sarah’s dreams, conjuring hazy glimpses of apparitions in a way that reminded me of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu and its unsettling vision of vengeful ghosts in the machine.
Arts Fuse Editor • The Arts Fuse • Sep 5, 2020
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Host poster
The ghost here has the pale and high-contrast look reminscent of Japanese horror like Ringu or Ju On.
A pesar de no ser un intento explícito de jugar con la transmisión contagiosa del mal a través de la pantalla (como claramente sucede en Ringu de 1998, Antrum de 2018 y Sinister de Scott Derrickson), Host mantiene una inquietud siempre presente en el espectador.
Cristóbal Pellicer, Freddy Campos • Código Espagueti • Aug 31, 2020
codigoespagueti.com ↗
Unlike some ‘internet’ horror films which find it hard to keep up with changing tech and become awkwardly outdated before they are even released – 2010s Chatroom being the most obvious example – Host feels gloriously fresh.
Rosie Fletcher • Den of Geek • Aug 1, 2020
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Creepy poster
His wife, Yasuko (Yûko Takeuchi, "Ringu"), is anxious to make friends with the neighbors, but Mrs. Tanaka says she and her moaning, bedridden mother 'don't associate with people around here.'
Reeling Reviews • Jan 10, 2020
reelingreviews.com ↗
Director Kiyoshi Kurosawa made a splash in the late 1990s/early 2000s, when U.S. audiences were introduced to J-horror by movies like Hideo Nakata's influential Ringu.
Waterworld poster
The Ring Two may be the dampest movie since Waterworld, but it’s not half as entertaining watching Watts and Dorfman reprise their haunted mother/son roles in this sequel as it was seeing Kevin Costner recycle his own precious bodily fluids.
The Austin Chronicle
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Bring Her Back poster
Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water and Ring used similar methods to express the worsening of a fragile state of mind.
Katherine McLaughlin • Little White Lies • Jul 30, 2025
lwlies.com ↗
Hideo Nakata’s Dark Water and Ring used similar methods to express the worsening of a fragile state of mind.
Katherine McLaughlin • Little White Lies • Jul 30, 2025
lwlies.com ↗
The Terminator poster
(There also seems to be an allusion to atomic terror in the closing shot, which unmistakably references the same in the nuclear-themed The Terminator : a saviour heroine chasing a ray of hope on a stormy open road.)
Film Freak Central
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The Last Samurai poster
Hiroyuki Sanada ("Ringu") is imposing as Ujio, Algren's enemy and Samurai instructor.
Reeling Reviews • Jan 10, 2020
reelingreviews.com ↗
Unfriended poster
Yet the problem of dramatising online interaction has often proved insurmountable, leading to such out-of-touch failures as Hideo Nakata’s crushingly analogue 2010 adaptation of Enda Walsh’s creaky play Chatroom .
Mark Kermode, www.theguardian.com • The Guardian • May 3, 2015
theguardian.com ↗
The Ring poster
But the subsequent video revolution deserves its own benchmark horror film, which the Japanese version, "Ringu," is among Asians, and which Verbinski's could become in the West.
Although the premise obviously sounds rather similar to this year's barely seen "FearDotCom" (where a visit to a website resulted in death), the film is actually a remake of the 1998 Japanese film "Ringu."
Screen It!
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Hideo Nakata’s 1998 cult horror flick Ringu (The Ring) was a surprise hit that quickly spawned both its own prequel and sequel, so an American remake was pretty much inevitable.
ViewLondon
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Verbinski takes a mediocre concept (from the novel by Kôji Suzuki, adapted by screenwriter Ehren Kruger, using some elements from Hiroshi Takahashi's screenplay for the 1998 Japanese version called Ringu), and a fair but relatively unknown cast (Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive , and Martin Henderson, Windtalkers ), and uses his talent for creepy visual artistry to make it an effective horror film.
FilmQuips
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Gore Verbinskis remake of Hideo Nakatas Ringu (a Japanese cult hit that spawned numerous sequels and inspired the slick but flawed FearDotCom) is deliciously implausible and deliriously unsubtle at times, yet it does a satisfying job of creating a world (okay, Seattle) where videotapes kill their viewers within seven days.
The Boston Phoenix
bostonphoenix.com ↗
In the case of the new thriller The Ring -- remake of the 1998 Japanese hit, Ringu -- the formative forces swim into focus without effort.
Carlo Wolff • Cleveland Scene • Nov 30, 2000
clevescene.com ↗

That's all the connections!