Halloween 2020 Ringstravaganza!

So many rings!

What’s this, you ask? Another episode in one week? Has the world gone mad? The answer to that question is obviously yes, but that is completely unrelated to anything having to do with the release of this special Halloween episode.

Did you know that there are twelve* movies in the Ring franchise? We didn’t, but now we do, because we watched Every. Single. One. Of. Them. Like with last Christmas’s Saw episode, it seemed like a good idea at the time [citation needed] but once we were six or seven movies in, fatigue started to set in. How many times can you watch a creepy ghost lady come crawling judderingly out of a television before you start stifling a yawn? About four, if our extremely rigorously conducted scientific study is to be believed— keep an eye out for that in the next edition of [ACADEMIC JOURNAL TBD].

For those not familiar with the series, Ringu is about a mysterious videotape that curses anyone who watches it, dooming them to die in seven days time. A reporter investigating some of these deaths gets wrapped up in the curse herself (himself if you’re one of those book-readin’ sorts) and tries to figure out a way to free her/himself from their impending doom, with… oh, let’s just say… mixed results. And then they made seven more movies about it. The story is based on a series of books written by Koji Suzuki, which range from good to great, although we should note that we haven’t read the most recently translated book yet. Still, the guy has a good track record, so it would be a surprise for it to turn out to be dogshit. The movies diverge from some pretty important elements of the books almost immediately, which is a bummer, because from Sprial onward things start getting pretty weird in a good way.

Anyhoo, if you’re interested in seeing the trailers for everything that we’ve watched for this episode, we’ve got you covered— not all of these are subtitled, unfortunately:

Ring 0

Ringu

The Ring Virus

The Ring

Rasen

Ringu 2

The Ring 2

Rings

Sadako 3D

Sadako 3D 2

Sadako

Sadako vs. Kayako

also, if any of the Super Furry Animals read this we would greatly appreciate it if you didn’t sue us back to the stone age. thanks in advance!

we realize three-quarters of the way through the episode that there’s actually a couple of Chinese horror movies about Sadako, but we were already at our tipping point for movies where a Sadako comes clambering out of televisions, so the merits of those will just have to remain a mystery for the ages. sorry!