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What's the Story, Mornin' Glory?
The Ring Virus
(1999)
A teen girl is watching TV when she receives a page from a friend. Looking slightly disturbed, she goes downstairs to get a drink. The phone rings. It’s her boyfriend on the line. He tries to convince her to go to "y'know, that place," but she is hesitant and complains to him about a message that her friend left her, not appreciating the fact that she’s trying to scare her. Suddenly, her boyfriend’s voice cuts off and as she looks up, something is coming toward her.
Sun-joo (Eun-Kyung Shin) is a reporter. When her niece, Sang-mi, dies in an unusual and unexpected way, she decides to investigate. When she finds out that Sang-mi’s friend and her boyfriend died the very same day of a heart attack, Sun-joo gets suspicious. The coroner who did the autopsy on Sun-joo’s niece’s friends ruled their death to be of supernatural shock. She goes to see him to get some information, but he only warns her that she’s getting into something dangerous. Sun-joo heads to the cabin that the group of teens was last seen together and she finds a shifty unlabelled video. She pops it in the VCR and the video foretells her death unless she…well…that part of the video was taped over.
She goes back to visit the coroner, who wants to see the tape. After she shows it to him, he too is marked for death. They have seven days to figure out the curse of the videotape and how to lift it. To make matters worse Sun-joo’s daughter has watched the tape as well. Will they be able to discover the mysteries and save themselves? Or will they die.
You Learn Something New Everyday...
 It's best to investigate deaths at night.
Coroner's assistants are very unexcited about their job.
Don't spy on girls with supernatural powers while they're in the shower.
When a video foresees your death, the first thing you should do is go get your picture taken in a sticker booth.
Even corpses need hugs.
Zing!
"I'd like to see that smile wiped off your face after I die." -Sun-joo
Survey SAYS...
The Ring Virus is the Korean version of Ringu, or perhaps many of you have seen the American remake, The Ring. Personally, the American remake scared the crap out of me. After I saw the movie, I went home and slept with the light on and continued to have flashbacks from the movie for weeks. Ringu was slightly lackluster after that. Probably because I knew the story. I read the comic of it and had already seen one movie from the franchise.
The Ring Virus was more of a mystery movie then a horror movie. It reminded me a lot of Nancy Drew. In fact, this movie should’ve been called “Nancy Drew Goes to Korea: The Mysterious Videotape.” There was no gore or violence, no shocks or attempted scares, no creepy children…nothing. I’ll admit, the warped faces in the photographs were pretty creepy, but seriously, that stuff creeps me out.
There was nothing new or innovating about this movie. It was like watching the same movie for the third time in a row, only in a different language. Although, it was less of a head scratcher then The Ring and slightly less informative then Ringu. The things that were mostly different was that the friends in the beginning, one dies and the other goes crazy, in this one the girl just dies by herself, the child of the reporter was a girl instead of a boy and the girl didn’t see dead people, and she didn’t have an ex-husband, but a creepy coroner guy who knows everything and a drunken co-worker. Now, I have to ask…why do those kids watch the tape? Who goes into the video collection at a hotel and picks out a blank, unlabelled videotape? What were they expecting? A crazy homemade sex tape left behind? Uninteresting family footage? Nothing?? I like how this tape tells you how to live after you watch the tape, but someone tapes over it with commercials. I found that hilarious.
The worst part about this movie was the freaking subtitles. I’ve seen some bad Hong Kong DVDs in my day and this was up there on the scale. A little more understandable then say, Yuu Yuu Hakusho HK subs, but at times it was just as undecipherable. Some parts of the movie weren’t subtitled at all and they weren’t scenes where you’re like “He probably said that…” no, it’s whole monologues they forgot to put there. So, if the subtitles weren’t there at all, they didn’t make a whole lot of sense (many were fractured sentences like, “Found. Come,” and I know they said more than that!). If it made sense, then there was a huge lag time with the subtitles so you didn’t really know who was saying what.
Also, the coroner was so completely useless. Every time Sun-joo asked him for help or what to do, he’d tell her it was her problem so she should figure it out herself. Jerk. I’d totally be, like, “Hey, well I’m gonna go lift this curse by myself then bro. I’m not lifting this curse for you unless you contribute.” But, that’s beside the point.
If you like...bad subtitling, Nancy Drew stories, unexcited coroners, douche-y secondary characters, corpse hugging, and jumping rats...This is the flick for you. As for us...we give The Ring Virus
That Wasn't so Bad Was It?
I was left Feeling: Unimpressed
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