Hideo Nakata’s Ring is return­ing to cin­e­mas for its 20^th anniversary

Wide­ly regard­ed as one of the great­est and most influ­en­tial J‑Horrors ever made, Hideo Nakata’s Ring (Ringu) is cel­e­brat­ing its 20^th anniver­sary this year with a long-over­due return to cin­e­mas, plus a first-ever UK Blu-ray release.

Based on the col­lect­ed sto­ries by famed Japan­ese author Kôji Suzu­ki, who also wrote Nakata’s 2002 psy­cho­log­i­cal hor­ror Dark Water, the film tells the sto­ry of a jour­nal­ist (Nanako Mat­sushi­ma) who trav­els to Izu Province to inves­ti­gate a series of grue­some deaths seem­ing­ly con­nect­ed to a mys­te­ri­ous videotape.

She quick­ly dis­cov­ers a creepy urban leg­end which sug­gests that any­one who watch­es the tape will die exact­ly sev­en days lat­er – unless they can pass on the curse by con­vinc­ing some­one else to watch it.

The film’s glob­al box office suc­cess sparked a renewed inter­est in J‑Horror, with a Nao­mi Watts-front­ed Eng­lish-lan­guage ver­sion duly arriv­ing in 2002, while Ring’s pop­u­lar­i­ty back in Japan led to a renais­sance in yūrei-inspired folk­lore. Today the image of the film’s ghoul­ish antag­o­nist, Sadako, is one of the most ter­ri­fy­ing and endur­ing in all of hor­ror cinema.

There have been numer­ous remakes, sequels and imi­ta­tions over the years, but noth­ing beats the nerve-shred­ding expe­ri­ence of Nakata’s slow-burn­ing night­mare – be it at the cin­e­ma or at home, where Sadako’s abil­i­ty to pass through the screen adds an extra dimen­sion of terror.

Ring is re-released in UK cin­e­mas from 1 March, and then on dig­i­tal, DVD and Blu-ray in a lim­it­ed edi­tion steel­book on 18 March. The Blu-ray boxset will include Ring 1 – 4.

Check out the brand new 20^th anniver­sary trail­er and quad poster below.