Ring/Spiral/Loop (Koji Suzuki)
Recently, there's been a lot of talk among the film festival circuit of
Hideo Nakata's new release 'Ghost Theatre', after years of not really being
talked about. Completely coincidentally, I decided to re-read the 'Ringu'
trilogy (well, re-read two-thirds; read for the first time one-third) that
inspired the film that shot not only him, but many other 'Asia Extreme'
directors to international fame.
'Ring' is an interesting one in the 'book vs. film debate,' with the
majority of people typically claiming the book is better to give the vain
veneer of being mildly intellectual (larks!). For me the film overshadows the
book that gave birth to it. Nakata changed certain elements for the film
version: changing the lead to a female, stating that females are more
believable in being frightened; the very cinematic ending, that probably
wouldn't have worked in book form. These changes improve Koji Suzuki's story,
removing some of the stranger elements towards the first book's conclusion that
spawn into the sequels.
'Ring', the first book in the trilogy is by far the strongest piece,
starting with a detailed discovery by journalist Asakawa that his niece's
mysterious and sudden death is linked to three others that happened at the
exact same time. Investigating this lead, he visits the Villa Log Cabin where
the four dead youths stayed a week before their deaths. There he finds a
strange video that will change his life, for seven days, at least.
The idea and the story is a good one, and perhaps a 1990 satire on
modern media leaving us all brain dead, who knows?! Enlisting the help of his
friend, Ryuji, he searches for an answer to the 'charm' (it is continually
referred to as) to lift the video's curse, and thus not die in seven day's
time.
Much like the film, however, the two sequels are where things start to
go wrong. 'Spiral' takes the theme to a new character, Ando, a doctor that
carried out an autopsy on *spoiler-alert* Ryuiji's body. Ando, for some reason,
seems to believe that Ryuji is trying to leave him a message in his DNA structure,
using random code-breaking techniques from his college days to form a rather
unlikely, and largely meaningless, message. This leads Ando to go through the
same journey as Asakawa, only with less information, with DNA investigations,
re-births and the 'virus' switching to book form following.
The third in the trilogy, that I hadn't previously read, 'Loop' gets
even more far-fetched, with third main character, Kaoru, a student doctor, using
some random thing he looked at as a child to try and solve the mystery of the
new cancerous virus that is spreading across the world.
I first read 'Ring' and 'Spiral' when I was a student, a good decade
ago, when I was definitely less well-read. One problem of being slightly more
well-read is that I have recently read 'Robin Ince's Bad Book Club', particularly
the thrillers chapter. Ince's description of thrillers is that they are overly long,
filled with unnecessary descriptions of clothing and naked breasts, designed
more to just keep the reader amused rather than provoke thought. They are
simply written, with everything explained, re-explained and again, to make a
lengthy book to justify your buying it. All three of these books are long,
particularly 'Loop', and - while this may be due to the translation - are quite
simply written, particularly 'Loop'. 'Spiral' features an entire chapter that
summarises 'Ring', and 'Loop' in turn has chapter dedicated to summarising
'Ring' and 'Spiral', as you go round-and-round - how possibly intentional?!
I enjoyed 'Ring', was less enthused by 'Spiral', and was just bored by
'Loop'. Things are just taken a bit too far here and it becomes a little
over-indulgent. The 'Ringu' trilogy is about a video that spawned a book that
lead to a major virus. The reality is that this was a book that spawned a film
that spawned a DVD empire in the West, that lead to endless over-indulgent copy-cats,
that quickly saw companies fold.
As with the first book, 'Ring', making copies only leads to problems,
and turning a good book into a trilogy only serves to spoil the original. It
should probably have just been left at that.
Ring
Days to read: 18
Days per book: 14.7
Spiral
Days to read: 14
Days per book: 14.7
Loop
Days to read: 15
Days
per book: 14.7
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