J-Film Blog

US Title: Rasen
Japanese Title: らせん (The Spiral)

Continuing in the Halloween spooky J-Horror theme, I bring you another entry from the series of “The Ring,” one of the sequels.  Rasen, or “the spiral.”

Here the curse of Sadako carries on more-or-less directly after the events of the original film, The Ring.  There is another part to the series, “Ringu 2″, but I’m not sure where it falls into place, either before this one or entirely separate, as one of the characters is central to that story…  ANYWAY.

A young pathologist, Dr. Mitsuo Ando (Koichi Sato) learns he must perform the autopsy on an old friend and classmate of his, Ryuji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada), who you might recall was the ex-husband of the girl from the orignal film….

It seems curiosity got the better of ol’ Takayama-san, and he watched the tape, and sure enough, wound up dead like the rest.  Although he’s left some odd clues behind for Ando to discover.

And so the mystery begins.  Actually this isn’t a bad film overall.  The premise, once you realize what it is, is a bit lame, though.  The “technological” angle thrown at it really doesn’t work for me.  Without spoiling it, it cheapens the entire concept of “the tape” as a supernatural element.  For me, anyway.

And the ending (along with the premise), while it might make us all feel a little bit better, is just a little too convenient and “sci-fi” for my liking.  You’ll know what I mean when you see it.

What’s good?  Rasen manages to maintain, for the most part, that same creepiness and j-horror vibe throughout.  Lots of “gotcha” moments with various themes, and always people freaking out and dying over the tape, or not the tape even.  Whoops, starting to spoil it I am…!

Unfortunately whats bad is that those gotchas mainly come near the front of the film, and as it progresses, it starts to drag out a bit as the good Dr. starts finding more and more clues, and Ryuji’s girlfriend Mai (Miki Nakatani) shows up.  Essential to figuring things out in the end, she is, but overblown her role is.

I’ve heard that “Ringu 2″ is a far better sequel than this, so I’m going to bump that one up in my queue.  But apart from the somewhat-expected turns of Japanese-film strangeness Rasen really isn’t so bad.

IMDB: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0134928/
Amazon: Rasen (part of: Ringu Anthology of Terror)

Can’t seem to find a short clip or trailer on YT, so here’s the 1st part.  Looks like the whole bloody thing is on there if you’re so inclined.