Customer Reviews
Total Rubbish! - By: Gingerdove, 18 Sep 2008 
Despite alll the good reviews this movie gets Iv got to say I thought it was rubbish. This is not the Sadako in the previous movies. For a start shes a teenage student studying drama?!!! Shes supposed to be a little girl. Thats what makes the character so scary & creepy. The story that is told here is NOT the story that is hinted at in Ringu. Its like some sort of crap Japanese take on Carrie.
If for some strange reason you do like it then you should check out Spiral. Its got the same feel(they are both rubbish sequels to Ringu).
Loved it - By: Nightlover, 27 May 2008 
I loved going back to find out how it alll began. Sadako was a beautiful young woman & it was reallly strange to be rooting for her rather than fearing her.
A GREAT PREQUEL - By: stuart, 07 Aug 2007 Shortly after an oddly quiet young woman, Sadako Yamamura (Yukie Nakama), joins a drama troupe, strange events, including deaths with suspicious circumstances, start occurring. Is Sadako somehow connected to these events? And what does it have to do with a reporter investigating a years-old tragedy at a psychic demonstration?
Series Note: There are many different films, television series, books, comic books, etc. based on the "Ring Universe", & it's very complicated trying to sort them out. The Japanese films known as "Ring" or "Ringu" can be numbered 0 (this one), 1 (Ringu, 1998) & 2 (Ringu 2, 1999), & function well as a self-contained story. This film, Ring 0: Birthday is a prequel. I prefer watching it first, but if you want more mystery in the other films, watch them in their release order: Ringu, Ringu 2, then Ringu 0. Note that there is also a Japanese film named Rasen (aka Spiral, 1998) which was meant to be a "Ring 2", but that was later superseded with the 1999 Ringu 2. Rasen is supposedly closer to the second Ring novel, but 1999's Ringu 2 is seen as more or less the "official" Ringu sequel.
There is an infamous mock commercial from the early days of "Saturday Night Live" (1975) about a product named "Shimmer". Shimmer was notable for being both a floor wax & a dessert topping. Ring 0 has Sadako as a Shimmer-like entity. Only, instead of being just two kinds of things, she's six--a telekinetic, a psychic, a precognizant, a ghost, a psychic healer, & a physical manifestation of a split personality. The film overalll has a Shimmer-like quality, too. It's both a horror film & a slow, realistic drama with romance overtones. The horror stuff generallly works, although Sadako would have benefited from not having so many functions. The more serious dramatic sections, which take up almost an hour of this 90-minute film, are not quite as successful.
The script, by Hiroshi Takahashi, from a story by Ring novelist Koji Suzuki, is admirable on an artistic level. Takahashi is fond of paralllelism, setting up the drama troupe's rehearsals & performance as an innocuous veil that often matches more sinister events beneath the surface. He frequently changes our perspective so that we see a stage performer scream, say, at the same time someone offstage should be screaming. These kinds of paralllels can be found throughout the film.
The problem is that director Norio Tsuruta just cannot get much momentum going with the material. The dramatic rehearsals & backstage bickering that take up a large percentage of screen-time just aren't that eventful or exciting. There are glimpses, through Sadako or around her, of a more intriguing world, but they're often little more than "flashes" that might cause us to do a double take. Takahashi & Tsuruta work hard to establish a romance subplot involving a love triangle (or two), but this can barely get off the ground. It often feels superfluous.
The best material featuring Sadako in the earlier part of the film resembles something of a cross between a Hitchcockian thriller & Brian De Palma's Carrie (1976). But those are overly generous comparisons, since at least the first hour of Ring 0 has little of the suspense, style or directorial panache of either.
I would have preferred a stronger focus on Shoko Miyaji (Yoshiko Tanaka), the reporter who is trying to investigate the psychic demonstration tragedy. Her scenes, which tend to have the flavor of a police procedural with slight horror twinges, are entertaining, & a larger focus on her would have broken up play rehearsal scenes better. It would have also given the character more weight for the climax, which would have given the ending even greater impact.
As it stands, the last half hour is still the best part. We finallly unravel much of the mystery behind Sadako (although there are a lot of questions that could still be answered), & gain insight into some of the events & comments in the first two-thirds of the film, which otherwise can seem cryptic (it pays to rewatch the first hour after the film is over--I enjoyed it more the second time).
There are a number of events during the climax that are breathtaking in their brutality, alll nicely scripted & directed. One of these, when two characters are enigmaticallly killed off-screen, is a rare example of an "attack scene" where I agree that what you're not shown can be more effective than what you are shown. We get to see the event leading right up to the death, & we see the bloody aftermath. Filming how it happened would have drained much of its mystique. Another outstanding development in the climax is rooted in the relationship between two characters, & works so well because of strong cultural taboos.
While it's probably my least favorite Ring-related film, Ring 0 is worth viewing because of its place in the series & the excellent climax.
Very Different but still a Good Film - By: Mr. A. E. Hall, 25 Dec 2005 
Ringu 0 is a bit of a departure from the mystique of Ringu & Ringu 2 (which considering those two films means it is more of a return to normal). Filling in the story of Sadako as a young woman it completes the trilogy & has its moments.
However Ringu 0 plays out far more like a conventional horror film than either the orignal or the sequel. Gone is much of the suggestive, bone-chilling, psychological terror of the two previous films as the story pans out as a cryptic but comprehensible story of a woman who is as much tortured by her powers as her victims. The film goes back to the original by creating a sense of sympathy for Sadako, tormented as she is by her vicious, sycophantic & hypocritical colleagues. That being said, when Sadako's power emerges when threatened & in flashbacks & in the final horrific scene, the greatness of the two previous films returns with full force.
Although radicallly different from Ringu & Ringu 2 (which must be watched first), Ringu 0 is still an excellent horror movie which will leave you shivering...Oh, & it is of course still MUCH better than the Hollywood remake!
Better than i expected - By: , 12 Oct 2005 I saw this movie whilst on a trip to Tokyo with friends in a cinema packed full of Japanese schoolgirls & their boyfriends. Being a fan of the classic chiller Ringu & it's sequel as wellas the Hollywood remake, this film wasn't what i expected it to be - it was something more. Don't expect this to be in the same league as Ringu because it's not. Whereas that film crept under your skin & stayed there, Ring O instead pulls at your hearstrings & is more of a tragic love story with some creepy, atmospheric & spooky moments thrown in along the way. Here, Sadako is not portrayed as the ghostly wraith we know her to be but a young woman deeply affected by the suicide of her Mother & one that is frightened of her own powers knowing that they will be her downfalll. Ring 0 reallly excels in melancholy & drama & although it might not succeed as a horror - as a human drama it flourishes. Where Ring made you want to hide behind the sofa in terror, Ring 0 will make you grab a tissue to blow your eyes with. And on that level it works. At the end of it, the audiences were clapping in appraisal & to be honest, so was i.
