A major box office hit in the Far East, Hideo Nakada's Ring is a subtly creepy Japanese ghost story with an urban legend theme, based on a series of popular teen-appeal novels by Susuki Koji. Far less showy than even the restrained chills of The Blair Witch Project or The Sixth Sense, Ring has nevertheless become a mainstream blockbuster and has already been followed by Ring 2 and the prequel Ring 0. A Hollywood remake is in the works.

Investigating the inexplicable, near-simultaneous deaths of her young niece and three teenage friends, reporter Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima) learns of a story about a supernaturally cursed video-tape circulating among school kids. As soon as anyone has watched the tape, allegedly recorded by mistake from a dead TV channel, the telephone rings and the viewer has exactly a week to live. Those doomed are invisibly marked, but their images are distorted if photographed. Inevitably, Asakawa gets hold of the tape and watches it. The enigmatic collage of images include a coy woman combing her hair in a mirror, an old newspaper headline about a volcanic eruption, a hooded figure ranting, people crawling and a rural well. When the phone rings (a memorably exaggerated effect), Asakawa is convinced that the curse is active and calls in her scientist ex-husband Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada) to help. He watches a copy of the video a day after Asakawa is exposed and willingly submits himself to the curse. Even more urgency is added to their quest when their young son is unwittingly duped, apparently by the mystery woman from the tape, into watching the video too, joining the queue for a supernatural death.

On the DVD: For a film made in the digital era, the letterboxed (16:9) print is in mediocre state, with a noticeable amount of scratching, though the Dolby Digital soundtrack is superb, making this a film that's as scary to listen to as it is to watch (the squeamish might find themselves covering their ears rather than their eyes in some scenes). Otherwise, there are trailers for the first two Ring films and Audition, 10 stills, filmographies for the principals, a review by Mark Kermode, blurb-like extracts from other reviews and the ominous option of playing Sadako's video after a solemn disavowal of responsibility from the distributors! --Kim Newman

A creepy Japanese ghost story with an urban legend theme, based on a series of popular teen-appeal novels by Susuki Koji.

A family fear they will lose their maid to the business world. They decide on matchmaking as a way of keeping her.

A triple pack featuring 'Ring' in which a group of teenagers are found murdered and mutilated within a week of watching a strange video and a curious journalist finds herself drawn into the web of fear... 'Ring 2' in which journalist, Mai Takano, once again investigates the strange video tape which has claimed the life of her boyfriend. She is deeply drawn into the supernatural world of Sadako... and 'Ring 0' in which more psychic goings on take place in this prequel to 'Ring', Sadako takes a job in a Tokyo theatre company and soon people start dying...

Ring 0 is the prequel to the successful Japanese ghost/horror movie Ring which has already spun off a conventional follow-up (Ring 2) and inspired a host of Far Eastern imitations, with a US remake in development. Opening with some tiny scene-setting to remind you of the urban legend of the cursed videotape, the film skips back to "30 years ago" and dramatises the hitherto-only-hinted-at tale of how the witchlike Sadako ended up in a well from which her melancholy, malign spirit spread her curse.

Strange young woman Sadako (Yukie Nakama) leaves her island home to become an apprentice in a theatre company, where her ambiguous psychic powers, several deaths and an outbreak of madness complicate the production. Nakama is fine as the spooky, Carrie-like heroine, as much a victim of her psychic abilities as those who drop dead around her, and there are several creepy sequences: a first night plagued by apparitions, a mob struck down one by one as they chase Sadako through a wood, and the inevitable, foreshadowed waking-up-in-a-well climax.

The original filmmakers have departed and the new team don't quite have the material to work with, which means Ring 0 plays better to initiate newcomers but can't hope to duplicate the stand-alone chills ofRing. Series fans will enjoy the filled-in back-story, but others should be warned that the film takes a bewildering amount of plot information for granted. --Kim Newman