Franchises: The Ring. Spiral (Rasen) (1998)

I didn't remember much about the sequels to Ring when I revisited them in 2021 in preparation to review them here, except that this one really stood out amongst the bunch. I can remember how perplexed I was when I saw the second film in the series was titled Rasen on that DreamWorks DVD set, and then the next film was Ringu 2. I've seen a lot of weird directions for franchises to go, including apparently missing sequels, in the case of the Zombie movies, and numerous unofficial ones in others, especially when it comes to Euro-horror, but I don't think I've ever seen one that had two "Part 2s" released one after the other. I also found it interesting when I read up on how this movie, released on the exact same day as Ring, bombed so badly that they wrote it out of existence the very next year, basically telling the public, "Okay, forget about that; Ring 2 is the true sequel." Usually, reboots like that happen several or more years after the previous movie, but the Japanese apparently work quick. In any case, if you're like me on my first viewing and go into this film totally blind, you will be really taken aback by it, as it's a very different direction to go from the first movie, with major science fiction and medical elements added into what was originally a purely supernatural ghost story. Then, when you read up on the books these films are based on, you realize this is a much more faithful adaptation than the first one, incorporating elements from both the original novel of Ring and its own source novel, also called Spiral. But, even if it is more faithful, that doesn't make it a good movie. Make no mistake, Spiral is not a bad movie, per se; it just doesn't have the appeal or spooky entertainment value of Ring. It's a dour, depressing story, one that's very slow-paced and talky, with its science fiction trappings making Sadako's curse and the videotape far more complicated than they needed to be, as well as demystifying them. It also doesn't have the mood, suspense, and terror of Ring, and is more of a sci-fi/supernatural medical drama than a horror film, with a very downbeat, apocalyptic ending.

Mitsuo Ando, a depressed, suicidal pathologist who's still reeling from the death of his young son, Takanori, two years before, receives a call one morning that a former colleague of his from medical school, Ryuji Takayama, is dead, and that he will be performing the autopsy. Remembering how the two of them used to challenge each other with secret codes, Ando finds through the autopsy that Ryuji seemingly died of a heart attack, and that there were ulcers in his throat, which he takes a specimen of. He then begins seeing visions of Ryuji and hearing his voice, when he's shown a strip of paper that was found inside his stomach, containing a code similar to the ones they used to puzzle each other with. He's told by the police that Ryuji's ex-wife, Reiko Asakawa, and their young son, Yoichi, have suddenly disappeared after having recently reestablished contact with him. The police also introduce him to Ryuji's student and girlfriend, Mai Takano, who found his body, and who one of the detectives feels knows more than she's letting on. Mai later tells Ando about the cursed videotape that Ryuji and Reiko were investigating, though he doesn't believe the story. Later, he tells his friend at the Department of Pathology, Miyashita, that Ryuji's heart attack was caused by a non-malignant tumor on one of his blood vessels, and Miyashita, in turn, tells Ando that the ulcers in his throat could possibly be smallpox lesions. Ando then learns that Reiko and Yoichi have been killed in a car accident, and when he arrives a the scene, he's told Yoichi was dead before the crash; what's more, a video deck is found in the backseat. Yoichi is determined to have died from the same heart condition as his father, which Ando believes rules out any connection with the cursed videotape. He meets Yoshino, Reiko's former boss, who gives him her diary, tells him of Reiko and Ryuji's investigation, as well as of Sadako Yamamura, and finally, gives him a copy of the tape. Believing that Ryuji's spirit is guiding him, as he continues to see visions of him, Ando watches the tape and has a nightmare where he experiences Sadako's fate, as well as sees her trying to seduce him. Now believing the curse is real, Ando seeks to destroy all copies to ensure it will end with him. However, his involvement, as well as his evolving relationship with Mai, eventually allows both the curse and Sadako to be reborn into the world in an unexpected way.

While Hideo Nakata and screenwriter Hiroshi Takahashi were left to their own devices while developing and filming Ring, original author Koji Suzuki was heavily involved with the film version of Spiral (he even has a cameo in it), which was written and directed by Joji "George" Iida. Iida had also written the 1995 television movie based on Ring, which, for all its apparent flaws, is still considered the truest adaptation of that book, so it's not surprising that Spiral came out the way it did. Having been working in the Japanese film industry since the 80's, when an 8mm short of his called Intermission was seen at the Pia Film Festival in 1980, Iida's first true film as director was a direct-to-video sci-fi/horror film called Cyclops, released in 1987. His first theatrical film was a 1989 horror-comedy called Battle Heater, which is about a carnivorous kotatsu (a type of heated table popular in Japan). Some other films of his include Tokyo Babylon 1999 (based on a manga series), Night Head (based on a popular television series he created, which became a big, multi-media franchise), Another Heaven (based on a book he himself wrote), and Dragon Head (another manga adaptation). He's mainly worked in television since the 2000's, having written and directed episodes of a mini-series called Iron Grandma in 2015 and creating Night Head 2041 in 2021.

The film opens with our protagonist, Mitsuo Ando (Koichi Sato), remembering when he lost his young son, Takanori, whom he only has a photograph of and some strands of his hair, which he keeps in an envelope. After looking at them, he attempts to slash his wrists with a scalpel, but can't bring himself to do it. It's an act he attempts again later in the film, and has likely attempted before, and he also has dreams where his son is still alive and his wife still with him, only for him to then relive Takanori's death. Miserable doesn't even begin to describe this poor guy's state of mind, and as if that weren't enough, he gets a shocking call one morning from his colleague and former medical school friend, Miyashita, telling him that another college friend of theirs, Ryuji Takayama, is dead and that he's going to perform the autopsy. In preparing for it, Ando remembers how he and Ryuji used to exchange codes for each other to solve, and once the post-mortem is done and they're preparing to close everything up, he imagines Ryuji's gutted corpse awakening and admonishing him for what he's done to him, given how he couldn't slit his own wrist. Despite the strange discovery of a strip of paper with a code in Ryuji's stomach, and the police telling him of the bizarre circumstances of his death, Ando is sure it was a simple heart attack. Through the police, he meets Mai Takano, who tells him that Ryuji talked about him, mentioning how he was the only one smart enough to break his codes. She also tells him of the cursed videotape Ryuji and Reiko Asakawa were researching, and while he doesn't put much stock into it, he does admit that he knew Ryuji was able to predict future events and know what others were thinking. He learns a tumor brought on the heart attack, but while he admits it's strange, he doesn't think there's anything that puzzling or alarming about it, and he also doesn't believe it when the ulcers found in Ryuji's throat are said to be smallpox lesions. When both Reiko and Yoichi are found dead after a car accident, and Yoichi is proven to have died of a similar heart attack before the crash, Ando feels that proves the videotape has no connection to the deaths.

That starts to change when Reiko's superior, Yoshino, meets with him, gives him Reiko's diary, and tells him the details of her and Ryuji's investigation into the tape, how Yoichi saw it at some point, and that the whole thing stems from Sadako Yamamura. He also shows him an old picture of Sadako and gives him a copy of the videotape he found at Reiko's apartment, calling it a "present." At that point, Ando has another vision of Ryuji, of him handing him the tape, and at his

apartment, he uses another system to break the code that spells out the word, "PRESENT." Believing that Ryuji's spirit had a hand in sending the tape to him, he watches it, then has a nightmare where he experiences Sadako's death at Dr. Ikuma's hands, followed by a vision of her attempting to seduce him. Waking up, he destroys the copy, and now thoroughly believing in the curse, attempts to wipe it out of existence before he succumbs to it, believing it to be Ryuji's desire. He gets thrown out

of Yoshino's news-office when he tries to stop him from publicizing anything about the tape and destroy his copy, attacking the man in his desperation. Now more despondent than ever, especially when he gets more proof by learning the four students who first saw the video in Izu all died of heart attacks as well, Ando starts marking the days leading up to his death. He also becomes closer to Mai, telling her what he feels about the whole thing and that Ryuji sent the tape to him as a "present" so he could successfully commit suicide,

though Mai doesn't think that's true. He's then called to Yoshino's apartment in time to see him die, apparently having watched the video, even though he denies it. Ando proceeds to destroy his copy, confident that he'll be the curse's last victim and sees it as the one act of healing he's done in his entire life. In this moment, Mai reveals that she has psychic powers like Ryuji when she feels Ando's pain over being unable to save Takanori, and gets him to admit that, despite his desire for death, he's actually afraid to die and regrets watching the video. This connection between them and her empathy for him leads to them having sex back at his place.

Learning that Yoshino died of something different than the past victims, Ando asks for the same tests to be run on himself, confident that the virus comes from the tape. Having seen a clinic in his vision of Sadako's death, he believes it might have been a smallpox clinic, which were common in Izu at the time of her death. To his surprise, his sample is found to have no traces of a virus, and his deadline comes and goes without his dying. What's more, Mai, after going missing for several days, turns back up, and everything seems fine. But then, Miyashita becomes infected with the same thing that killed Yoshino, without having seen the tape, and Mai isn't acting like herself at all. Ultimately, Ando discovers that, through their relationship and due to some manipulation from the beyond, he's helped Sadako be reborn into the world.

After appearing in only two scenes in Ring, Mai Takano (Miki Nakatani) has graduated to a co-star here, and would go on to be the protagonist of the next film. Here, what was hinted at in the first movie is confirmed: she and Ryuji Takayama were lovers as well as pupil and teacher. Still shocked over having found him dead, Mai faints when one of the detectives gets in her face, grabs her, and shouts at her, accusing her of knowing what's happened to Reiko and Yoichi when she repeatedly insists she doesn't. When she wakes up in the infirmary and finds Ando sitting by her bedside, she tells him that Ryuji talked about him, saying he was the only one who could break his codes. She also tells him of the cursed videotape he and Reiko were looking into and hints at his psychic abilities, before lamenting, "Why did he have to die and leave me here alone?" Later in the film, it's revealed that she has psychic powers herself, that she can feel what someone else is thinking and feeling by touching them, and that Ryuji was the only person she felt secure enough to talk to about it. When she makes the mistake of going back to his apartment, she's able to feel everything he experienced at the time of his death, then breaks down crying when she sees the chalk outline of his body on the floor and remembers the vacant, empty look on his face when she found him. Though Ando insists that Ryuji, as well as Yoichi, died from ailments unrelated to the videotape, Mai is unswayed. She tells him how Ryuji was trying to find a way to save Yoichi's life for Reiko's sake but that, at the time of his death, he'd "changed" after seeing something, again remembering the expression on his face. She later receives a package in her mailbox that has Ryuji's name on it, containing, among other things, a drawing of a man and a boy by the seashore, whose significant is revealed at the end of the movie. Once she meets with Ando after he becomes convinced the curse is real, and he tells her that Ryuji wants him to destroy the videotape and wipe the curse from existence, Mai says she doubts that was his intent. She's also shocked when he infers that he wants to die, not understanding why he would want such a thing. Later, when she takes his hand, she feels his pain, as well as its source, and empathizes with him, assuring him that there's no shame in actually being afraid to die and regretting condemning himself by watching the tape. Her comforting him leads to the two of them having sex, but she's unable to promise him that she'll be present at the time of her death. However, her death comes before his, and in a way nobody expected.

Ando's closest friend is another old medical school chum of his and a colleague in the Pathology Department, Miyashita (Shingo Tsurumi). He often looks out for him, telling him to stop being so gloomy, and also picks him up when he gets into a fight at Yoshino's newsroom, trying to get his copy of the tape. Speaking of which, Miyashita, as expected, doesn't believe in the curse, and while he admits the findings of Ryuji's autopsy are strange, he, like Ando initially, doesn't believe they're anything to be alarmed about and that there's a rational explanation. When a professor from Bunkai University says the ulcers found in his throat might be smallpox, both are sure he's wrong, given how the disease has been wiped out. Later, he isolates the virus and reveals that Yoshino died of a different disease than the one that killed Ryuji and Yoichi. Upon reading Reiko's diary about the videotape, he deduces how it could actually infect someone with a virus, but doesn't take it seriously, until Ando mentions how, in his visions of Sadako's death, he glimpsed a smallpox clinic in Izu. Ando is tested for the virus but it comes back negative, and since he's still alive a week after watching it, Miyashita declares that the videotape has nothing to do with anything, also revealing that the virus that killed Yoshino isn't all that infectious. But then, he starts to cough, like Yoshino, and he later appears to Ando with the same lesions on his throat and visions of Sadako. He deduces that Reiko's diary infects the reader with this new virus, and at the end of the movie, before he dies, he helps Ando with the process that will bring his son back to life, but also sets in motion events that will doom mankind, which he's all too aware of.

Yoshino (Yutaka Matsushige), Reiko's superior, first shows up at the scene of her fatal car accident, taking pictures of the wreckage, and points out to one of the detectives that there's a video deck in the backseat. Not long after that, he shows up at the Department of Pathology and meets Ando formally. He gives him Reiko's diary and tells him about her and Ryuji's investigation into the cursed videotape, including their attempt to save Yoichi after he watched it, as well as the tape's origin and its tie to Sadako Yamamura, showing Ando an old photograph of her. He also tells him how Reiko tried to save her son by copying the tape and showing it to her father, which didn't seem to help at all, and that her father has since committed suicide, leaving a note where he says he's taken it upon himself to destroy the tape. Finally, he gives Ando a copy of the tape he found at Reiko's apartment. Yoshino denies having watched it himself, saying that, while he doesn't believe the story, he's still too creeped out to watch it. He asks Ando to find any kind of scientific answers to the tape's nature, only for him to watch the tape and show up at his office, telling him he can't publicize anything about it and demands he give him his copy so he can destroy it. This leads to Ando attacking Yoshino, throwing and pinning him to the floor, demanding he give him the tape, before he's finally restrained. Despite this, Yoshino later contacts Ando and has him meet him at his apartment. When Ando arrives, he finds Yoshino, who was constantly coughing during their first meetings, looking and sounding very sick, with lesions on his neck. He asks him, "Was the well that Sadako fell into broken in one place?", seemingly proving that he did watch the videotape, as this detail wasn't mentioned in the diary. Yoshino still insists he didn't but that he's having nightmares about Sadako. Now regretting getting mixed up in this, he gives Ando the tape and journal, only to collapse in his living room and die after continuously coughing. Later, it's revealed that he was killed by a different ailment, this one transmitted by reading the diary.

Despite dying at the end of the first film, Ryuji Takayama (Hiroyuki Sanada) has a very significant role in this story, given his friendship with Ando and their old habit of exchanging codes with each other, based on whatever they were studying in medical school. Ryuji haunts Ando throughout the film, appearing to him after he's completed the autopsy and admonishing him for doing this when he couldn't even cut his own wrists. Also an apparent code from him is found written on a little slip of paper recovered from Ryuji's stomach. When Yoshino gives Ando the copy of the videotape, Ando sees a vision of Ryuji in the room, then sees him handing him the tape in Yoshino's place. This, coupled with him breaking the code and spelling out the word "PRESENT," makes him believe he's being guided by Ryuji from beyond the grave and that he wants him to destroy all copies of the tape, ridding the world of Sadako's curse. Another big significance Ryuji has in the story is his close relationship with Mai Takano, revealed to be another psychic like him. Because of this, he's the only one she felt she could talk to and they became lovers. Significantly, he also told Mai about Ando long before the two of them ever met, with Mai adding that she believes he may have known it would happen. Their coming together and making love marks a major turning point in the film. Sadako is reborn through this act and, among other things, reveals to Ando that Ryuji has been aiding her this whole time, helping to engineer her rebirth (Miyashita also believes Reiko is involved, since her diary is what infects people with the new virus, but whether or not she's also Sadako's pawn is never made clear). In a vision where she drags him down to the bottom of the well, Sadako says that, in return, she wants to help Ryuji be reborn as well, also offering to do the same for Ando's son. At the end of this scene, Ryuji is revealed to be watching from the top of the well, confirming his involvement in everything.

Remember how in Ring, I talked about a possible suggestion that Ryuji was Sadako's unwitting pawn even before he died? That applies here, with Mai telling Ando, "I'm sure he knew that you and I would be meeting like this," though he likely didn't know of the detail that he would dead, as Mai says a seer cannot see into their own future. And once he died, he became Sadako's willing servant. Though, there's a question of when he sent the drawing that Mai finds in her mailbox, which is

revealed to be an image of Ando and a reborn Takanori enjoying themselves at the seashore, as seen as the end of the movie. Did he send it right before he died, not knowing exactly what the vision he drew it from meant, or did he see it to that it made its way to her after his death, akin to how Ando believes he saw to it that the tape came into his possession, as a subtle hint at what was to come? Or did he even send it at all, or was it Sadako's doing? The way she looks at the drawing and then tosses it aside at the end suggests that could be the case. Like so much in this franchise, the answer to this question is all up to interpretation.

In the end, combining their DNA with Sadako's ova and then placing it into her uterus allows both Ryuji and Takanori to be reborn, at the exact ages they were at the time of their deaths. Ando is reunited with his son, while Ryuji, now considering Takanori his brother, hooks up with Sadako (which is just wrong). He tells Ando that Reiko's diary is being published as a novel, meaning that the virus will spread throughout the world and more people like Sadako will be born. Though he doesn't know

exactly what this will mean for the human race, he believes it might mean a major step in their evolution. But it's obvious he knows something he's not letting on, something that suggests whatever happens will not be for mankind's benefit. First, he wonders what Takanori's life will be like. Then, when Ando offers to bring Yoichi back to life as well, Ryuji answers, "I couldn't be so cruel. I couldn't bring a child back into this world." That ties back into something Mai told Ando, about how Ryuji had always regretted

having passed on his genes, something hinted at in the first film. Although he'd tried to help save Yoichi when he was cursed by the tape, Mai added that he'd seen something at the time of his death that changed him considerably. Perhaps it was a very clear glimpse of the future created by Sadako, which is why, despite his attachment to her, he's reluctant to bring his son back. In any case, Ando insists that Ryuji's wrong in his feeling this way, but before he and Sadako leave, he tells him, "It'll be a long time yet... before you can breathe easy."

In the case of Sadako (Hinako Saeki), this film, first and foremost, demystifies her, first by showing her face and revealing that she was actually quite attractive; second by giving her a little more backstory, as we learn she was once part of an acting troupe in Tokyo (Ring 0: Birthday would greatly expand on this); and third by giving her a voice and a more defined agenda. Appearing to Ando in a very seductive manner after he first watches the videotape, climbing atop his body

while completely naked, licking his face, and kissing him, Sadako is later reborn into the world when Ando has sex with Mai Takano while "infected" with the videotape's virus, which also contains Sadako's DNA. She appears to him in the form of Mai and the two of them make love again, although "Mai" proves to be much more seductive and sexual than before. But when the real Mai is found dead, and Ando is told there were signs she'd just given birth, he realizes the woman he met up with is the resurrected Sadako. Though he accuses

her of murdering Mai, she insists she retains all of Mai's memories and that she's her as well as Sadako. When he, naturally, becomes enraged at this, calling her a liar, Sadako taunts him, saying, "You didn't have sex with me out of love. You only did it because you were afraid of dying. I wanted to help you. But you didn't love me... You were happy to feel superior to Dr. Takayama." She then reveals that her ultimate goal is for, "Everyone to know... the fear I've felt," which you can infer was her motivation in the first film but hearing her actually say it makes it so much less effective. You also learn just how she plans to exact her vengeance on mankind, by having Reiko's diary published as a book, thereby allowing the virus it contains to spread elsewhere, as well as leading to more people like Sadako being born. In return for his cooperation in helping her resurrect Ryuji, Sadako offers to bring Takanori back to life. Despite his conflict, he agrees and she does fulfill her promise. In the end, she hooks up with the resurrected Ryuji, essentially give Mai what she always wanted as well, but Ando tells her to stay away from Takanori.

As a more faithful adaptation of Koji Suzuki's books, Spiral retains the medical elements of both its source novel and the original novel of Ring, with the "curse" contained within the videotape actually being a smallpox-like virus that infects the viewer and leads to them dying within a week of a heart attack caused by tumors that develop on the blood vessels. Late in the film, Miyashita suggests that it works by the DNA data on the tape being absorbed through the viewer's retinas and thus, the

virus is reconstructed within them. The tape also happens to have Sadako's own DNA on it (I've read that in the books, there was a correlation in that she was infected with smallpox at the time of her death), which is how she's reborn through Mai. Later, a different virus, one that causes its victims to die from respiratory failure, is found to be transmissible through the writing in Reiko's diary, which is how Sadako plans to spread the feeling of fear and helplessness she felt before she died across the world, as well as lead to the birth of

more like her through her DNA. Like I said before, this is just not as appealing or creepy as the idea of a purely supernatural curse. A videotape and a book that infect you with a disease just by watching and reading them are unsettling concepts, for sure, and the infected do see visions of Sadako, as well as experience her death in the well, but their ultimately dying of a heart attack has none of the power of Sadako's vengeful spirit coming for them and enacting her wrath personally. Plus, this flies in the face of how the first film was constructed and also hurts its effectiveness in hindsight, as it suggests the victims were either just seeing or hallucinating about Sadako when they died, while what killed them was the virus.

Because production began as soon as Ring was completed, Spiral shares much of the production crew and some of the actors (aside from Hiroyuki Sanada and Miki Nakatani, Daisuke Ban briefly reappears as Dr. Ikuma in the one flashback) but, make no mistake, besides the more faithful approach towards adapting the source material, Joji Iida brings a very different feel to the movie's visual style and direction. In stark contrast to the more natural look Hideo Nakata went for, Iida goes for an overall desaturated, kind of murky look,

with a number of the interiors, like the Department of Pathology, reminding me a bit of the way David Fincher's movies look. The autopsy scene has that visual aesthetic in spades, with some pretty ugly greens and that murkiness adding to its queasy nature. The scenes in Ando's apartment, on the other hand, are often bathed in a very clinical, blue-white light that seems to reflect his depressed state of mind, and it can be seen elsewhere too, like in the flashback of him and Ryuji at medical

school, where the whites are practically glowing all around them, and at the end when Ando confronts the reborn Sadako at his office. The movie goes back and forth between those two predominant looks throughout, but then, the final scene on the seashore is done in a hazy, sepia-tone, possibly alluding to the potential apocalypse that Sadako is about to bring forth. That's not to say it doesn't have any color to it whatsoever, as Ando's memories of his son's death are often bathed in a very nice deep blue, but for the most part, even the exterior scenes are a bit muted.

Unlike Ring, Spiral takes place almost entirely within the city, adding to the feeling of melancholia created by both the film's look and its downbeat story. The more noteworthy settings include Ando's apartment, which is a perfect representation of his mental state, with the furniture covered up and his books and television set sit on the floor, up against the wall (the complete opposite of how it looks in his dream about coming home to find his family there); the offices and laboratories of the Department of Pathology, as well as the room

where the autopsy is performed, which give off a cold and clinical vibe, as well as make your skin crawl when it comes to the latter; the offices of Yoshino's news show; and the streets of the city, particularly a plaza where Ando destroys one copy of the tape and he and Mai truly bond. Aside from glimpses of the forests of Izu during the flashbacks to Sadako's death, the only settings outside the city are the beach where Ando lost his son and another such area with a lot of sandy dunes where he's reunited with Takanori and talks with the newly resurrected Ryuji and Sadako at the very end.

One thing you notice about Iida's directing style here is that there are a handful of scenes he shoots in fairly long, sustained takes. Following the opening, which is one of his failed suicide attempts, Ando's true introduction lasts for almost a full, sustained minute, as the camera follows him while he finishes shaving in the bathroom, walks down the hall and into the living room to answer the phone, and then follows him across the room as he walks over to the chair, learning of Ryuji's death and that he'll be performing the autopsy on him.

During that scene, which lasts almost a minute and a half, there's only one cut to a close-up of Ando as he sits down. There are others that last much longer than that. The scene where Ando meets up with Mai after he's watched the tape has an initial shot that lasts for almost two full minutes, as the camera pans down from the large window they're sitting in front of and then very slowly tracks in on them as they talk. Not long after that, when he smashes up Yoshino's copy of the tape at a plaza, we get

another scene done in a couple of very long takes. First, we see Ando and Mai drive up to the camera from a distance and pull up to a curb. Then Ando gets out with the videotape, stomps and smashes it to pieces on the plaza, declares that he'll be the curse's last victim, and sits down nearby, all as Mai looks on. This one shot lasts for almost two minutes, and it's followed by an even longer one, this one over three minutes, where Mai walks over to Ando, touches his hand, feels his pain, and the camera pans over to her as she admits she has powers similar to Ryuji, and then goes back to Ando as he tearfully admits he's afraid to die.

Another interesting aspect of Iida's direction is the way he handles the transitions to flashbacks and/or visions. Some are done in the conventional way, such as showing someone thinking and then cutting to the actual memory, like when Ando thinks about the codes he and Ryuji would exchange at medical school, or when Mai goes back to Ryuji's apartment and immediately experiences the terror he felt at the time of his death, but others are done in a more elaborate manner. After he visits the scene of the car accident, Ando appears to return

home, only to be greeted by his long-gone wife (whose face you never see), who tells him that Takanori fell asleep while waiting up for him. He goes in and checks on him, and the two of them have a nice moment... then, Takanori's expression changes, Ando's eyes well up with tears, and the boy is suddenly pulled under a torrent of water, along with his futon, transitioning into the memory of Ando diving into the water, after having apparently driven his car off into the ocean, in a failed attempt to save Takanori. Ando wakes up in

his bed with a start, his left hand clenched, as it was when he grabbed for Takanori, only to have yanked out a bit of his hair, and he tries to commit suicide again. Later, when he watches the video for the first time, it's shot in a more overt, horror movie manner, with creeping push-ins, the camera circling around behind him, extreme close-ups of some of the tape's familiar images, and cutting back and forth between them and a close-up of his eyes. Then, when the tape finishes, the camera

pans around him frantically and, in a close-up of his eye, an image appears within it, then fills the entire screen. It turns out to be a dark, sepia-toned POV of Sadako as she runs through the forest in Izu, reaches the well, is attacked by Dr. Ikuma, and tossed down it. It switches to an overhead, third-person view of Sadako lying at the bottom of the well, as the camera pulls up and out of the well, showing Ikuma crying by its side, lifts up into the trees and pans across them, and suddenly goes all

the way back down to a close-up of Sadako's face. It cuts back to Ando, as the camera comes right at him and he's knocked to the floor, when Sadako appears, crawls on top of him, and attempts to seduce him (the flickering lights from the television really make this scene feel nightmarish), before he throws her off and finds himself alone in the room. At the end of the movie, Sadako literally pulls him down into the well. One minute, she's holding his head in her hands, and in the next, he finds himself falling down the well, where she's waiting for him at the bottom to continue taunting him. And at the end of this scene, Ryuji appears up top, looking down on them, confirming her claims that he was aiding her.

But, creative and inspired direction and camerawork doesn't help with the fact that Spiral is not a very enjoyable film. One reason is the tone. Instead of a tense, foreboding atmosphere, with a feeling of time slowly running out for the characters, like in Ring, we instead have a downbeat, melancholy, humorless story centered around a man who is depressed and wants to commit suicide but just can't bring himself to go through with it, leading him to watch the tape because he thinks it's his dead friend's way of

giving him a method that he can't back out of. Even though he eventually admits that he is scared to die and regrets having watched it, because it doesn't seem like there's anything he can do, he simply marks the days leading up to his deadline on the calendar and tries to see what he can find about the tape before his time's up. Then, by the end of the movie, he's been manipulated into giving Sadako a chance to be reborn into the world through and in the image of the girl he was beginning to love, killing her; learns that his dead friend, who he

thought was guiding him to wipe out the curse, was instead part of this plot; has likely lost his only other friend from a new virus; and finally, sells out mankind in order to have his deceased son back, as Sadako is planning to spread the virus by publishing Reiko's cursed diary. Also, besides Ryuji becoming Sadako's pawn in death, like how Tomoko was hinted to be in the first movie, let's also not forget how this film unceremoniously kills off both Reiko and little Yoichi in an offscreen

car accident, with the latter having died from the virus beforehand, and Reiko's father committing suicide, also offscreen. Combine this with the movie's rather morose, dreary visual style and the fact that, save for the flashbacks and ending, the story never leaves the oppressive confines of the city and you have a viewing experience that's more likely to bum you out than thrill you.

That's another thing: the movie is mainly a slow-paced, dreary drama, with sprinkles of horror and science fiction. Aside from a couple of scenes like when Ando first watches the videotape and goes looking for Mai when she disappears, it's less interested in thrilling you than it is showing you a bunch of dialogue and exposition scenes with the characters either discussing the events of the previous film, attempting to piece together what you already know, talking about their own private pain, or discussing this virus that's suddenly reared

its head. Speaking of which, there's the emphasis on the medical, sci-fi elements from the original novels. Besides not being as creepy as the purely supernatural angle the first film took, as well as demystifying and, in a way, hurting its effectiveness in retrospect, the inclusion of the virus makes the whole thing unnecessarily complicated and much more out there than it even was previously. In fact, when I was describing how Sadako's curse functions in this context, I think I

got it all straight but I'm not sure. And then, on top of that, you have the concept of Sadako actually being reborn through Mai because Ando had sex with her after watching the videotape, which also had Sadako's DNA on it, and her being able to bring dead people back by combing their DNA with her ova and returning them to her uterus, with hormones allowing them to quickly grow after she gives birth, returning to the age they were when they died. It's just way too much, and because Ryuji is now technically her son when he's resurrected at the end of the movie, the two of them hooking up is nothing less than incest, which is disgusting no matter how you slice it off.

And that sets up another segue: Spiral isn't as classy a movie as Ring. While it's not exactly an erotic thriller, there's more of an overt sexual angle to this story, not just in Sadako's literally being reborn through Mai after an act of sex and her uterus allowing the deceased to be resurrected to the age they were when they died, but also in how she tries to seduce Ando from the moment she first appears, crawling onto him while naked and licking and roughly kissing him. The sex scene between him and Mai isn't graphic at all, but it's

something that wasn't present at all in the first film, and when "Mai" reappears to Ando after having disappeared for a few days, the two of them have a very steamy rendezvous at his workplace. They're shown making out in a corner at the bottom of a flight of stairs, with Mai commenting, "You smell like a corpse," but, not only is she not complaining, it seems to turn her on. Ew. After that, you see them back at Ando's apartment, making love on the floor, with Mai straddling him and removing the

brown leather jacket she's wearing, revealing a rather slinky dress underneath. She starts licking and kissing him in the same manner as Sadako when she appeared after he watched the tape (which should've clued him), all while Skinemax-like music plays. And keep in mind that he later learns he was making out with a resurrected dead girl, as well as that both she and Mai are college age, while he's approaching middle age (I know the age of consent in Japan is different, but I can't help but be skeeved out when I see them together, regardless if she's Mai or Sadako).

While not an out-and-out gorefest, it shows a fair amount of red stuff, immediately distancing itself from its more suggestive and subtle predecessor by having an autopsy scene six minutes in. You see some of the grisly details, like Ando first cutting into Ryuji's neck, blood and bits of flesh running towards a drain on the table, removed organs placed in trays nearby, the removal of an ulceration from the throat, and a shot of much of the now empty abdominal cavity at the end of the procedure. Much of the actual cutting and

dissecting happens just off-screen, but you can still see the blood on their gloved hands, as well as hear the sounds of skin being cut and bones cracking. I've said in other reviews that hospitals and places like this really get to me, and I especially find the idea of this dead man lying there naked while others cut into him to be really skin-crawling. Speaking of which, the effects of the fake body they cut open, with Hiroyuki Sanada sticking his head out from under it, as well as the organs and blood, are very well done. And then, after the

autopsy is finished, Ando has a vision of Ryuji's eyes snapping open and, seeing his hollowed-out chest (there's a bit of dark humor to this, as he exhales in a manner like, "Oh, come on!"), he sits up and admonishes him for this when he was too cowardly to slash his own wrists. They use the fake body for when he first awakens, and when he sits up, they resort to rear and side shots of him, with his skin made up to look pale and dead, with a lot of blood and ugly-looking grooves on his back, and

more squishing, cracking sounds to make your toes curl. It's nicely executed, and kind of reminds me of the scene in Day of the Dead where the zombie tries to get off the operating table and his guts fall out. After that gruesome spectacle, the only other noteworthy instances of makeup effects are a brief shot of Yoichi's bloody arm at the scene of the accident, the lesions that develop on Yoshino and Miyashita's necks, and the real Mai's body, which has the ugly details of dead, bruised flesh and blood running down her legs, alluding to her having given birth.

That's one thing the film leaves to your imagination: what exactly Mai went through when she gave birth to Sadako. The last time we see the real Mai, she wakes up alone in her apartment, feels sick, runs to the bathroom, and vomits in the sink. Looking up at the mirror, she sees Sadako reflected behind her and turns around in shock. After that, Ando tries to contact her for several days, but she never answers her phone. This prompts him to drive to her apartment, but when she doesn't respond to the doorbell, his knocking,

and yelling, and he sees water running out from under the door, he decides to break in. Rushing to the bathroom, he yanks back the shower curtain, only to find the bathtub filled up beyond capacity, with some blood sitting at the bottom. Next thing we know, Mai seemingly reappears to Ando, only for the real girl's body to be found, with signs that she'd recently given birth. Exactly how it worked, how long it took for Sadako to reach maturity after the birth, and whether she killed Mai or she committed suicide following it is left as a really creepy mystery.

The music score, which was the one and only credit for a group (I assume it was group, at least) called La Finca, is much more generic and not as memorable as the score for the first film. The one part of it that kind of reminds me of the previous film is the scene where Mai first tells Ando of the videotape, which starts with low, eerie sounds but then transitions into something more poignant when she laments Ryuji's loss. All of the scary and shocking scenes are scored in the same typical, horror movie fashion, with lots of electronic rumbling and screeching sounds, as well as an occasional bit of piano work here and there, which are actually the most memorable parts of these motifs. The same goes for the moments that are meant to be atmospheric, which are done with the usual creeping, electronic sounds, some of which are very far in the background, while others are more overt. The best example of this is when Ando watches the video, a scene that combines this film's more generic approach with the eerie sounds heard on the tape in the first movie. However, the parts of the score that stick out the most to me are the poignant piano/electronic mixture themes that play for the scenes where Ando becomes despondent over Takanori's death and he and Mai become closer, which are pretty fair, and that music that sounds more like something you'd hear in a 90's erotic thriller or a Cinemax After Dark flick. You first hear it when Ando rushes to Mai's apartment when he can't get her to answer the phone, which doesn't fit with what should be a tense sequence, but it really hits you full force when "Mai" returns and she and Ando start making out passionately. Seriously, you could take those clips and that music and make a very convincing, "Tonight on Cinemax," fake advertisement. But, I will say that the score does end on a nice note, as there's a very heartfelt, string piece that plays as Ando and the resurrected Takanori go off together on the beach, but at the center of it is a more sinister, dirge-like section for when the camera zooms in on a close-up of the drawing of the man and boy at the beach, suggesting darker connotations to the whole thing (though what those are, I couldn't possibly guess), before going back into the warmer music. And finally, like Ring, there's a song that plays over the ending credits, called Yuganda tokei, performed by either a group or a singer called HIIH. It's generic and uninspired as well.

As a curiosity piece due to its reputation as the "lost" sequel to Ring (though, some of the later Sadako films do count it as canon) and as a more faithful adaptation of Koji Suzuki's work, Spiral is worth at least one viewing by fans of the series. It's also aided by strong performances, creative direction and camerawork, and some well-executed, grisly makeup effects, chief among them being the autopsy scene early on. But, in the end, the film probably won't appeal to hardcore fans of the first movie because of the science fiction elements retained from the source material, the complete demystification of Sadako and her curse, and how the medical elements involving viruses make the whole thing more complicated than necessary. Plus, it's more of a drama with sci-fi and horror elements, with few thrills or scares, the music score is subpar, for the most part, and above all else, the story is so downbeat and humorless from beginning to end that it's not a very enjoyable viewing experience at that. It's not a horrible movie, but I can see why it didn't have the same impact as Ring.