Earlier this week we told you that Paramount hopes Rings, their long-gestured sequel to The Ring and The Ring Two, will become an annual Halloween event.
Gore Verbinski’s 2002 The Ring, starring Naomi Watts as a journalist must investigate a mysterious videotape which seems to cause the death of anyone in a week of viewing it, was a remake of Hideo Nakata’s Japanese Ringu (1998). I still consider it to be one of the scariest and most unnerving horror films ever made.
And while The Ring was one of the most successful horror films ever here in the States, the Ringu franchise was also huge in its native land. It started the “J-horror” craze, and is responsible for the birth of the 2000 made-for-TV movie Ju-On, which would also get a U.S. remake in 2004 (the film was produced by Sam Raimi’s Ghost House, and its success is one of the reasons we never saw Ash vs. Freddy vs. Jason) under the moniker The Grudge.
While both franchises centered around a curse and feature a super scary evil spirit, they were inherently different stories, but had equal the spooks. I’m unsure which is bigger, but there are way more sequels to Ju-On than that of Ringu.
We’re pretty excited for Rings to reignite the franchise here in the States this coming October, but there’s a primer coming out of Japan on June 18th.
As previously reported, after a brilliant April Fool’s Day joke went viral, Kadokawa and NBCUniversal Japan have joined forces for the ultimate J-horror battle: Sadako vs Kayako.
Grotesque director Koji Shiraishi is behind the camera with Mizuki Yamamoto caught in the middle of the two battling horror icons.
We’ve already seen a teaser trailer, but now have a full-length version to go along with a handful of awesome screengrabs.
It looks as if both stories are seemingly separated, at least until the two spirits come across the same victim in the final shot (it reminds me of Monica Keena’s scene in Freddy vs. Jason). The coolest shot is that of Kayako being choked by Sadako’s famous hair, although the trailer loses its power with an awful Japanese pop song playing over much of the footage.
Ju-On: The Final, billed as the final Ju-On, opened in Japan last June, while Sam Raimi is producing a re-remake here in the States.
