Technology and the Fear of the Familiar in Ringu

By Katie Ehrbar

The cursed videotape at the center of Hideo Nakata’s Ringu is an unforgettable piece of horror imagery, one that has been copied, parodied, and referenced ever since. The idea that watching a piece of media could lead to one’s death seven days after viewing it is not based on a genuine phenomenon, yet it still effectively unsettles audiences despite knowing it has no real-life equivalent. In terms of their usage in horror films, the technological aspects of the videotape and the telephone can be used to expose anxieties around the family unit and general modern connectivity. Ringu explores common fears surrounding the loss of control of one’s life and family at the hands of modern technology by combining supernatural horror tropes and the familiar to create an uncanny portrait of contemporary anxieties in an unexpected way. 

The unsettling quality of the videotape in Ringu falls under Freud’s explanation of the uncanny valley, which is defined as “opposing meanings that signify a communion of the familiar and the unfamiliar” (Duong). This in-between status is disturbing because of its almost normal quality that is only slightly off in some way. The same phenomenon is why dolls are frequently at the center of horror movies because they are an artificial replication of what is most familiar to us – ourselves and other human beings. A key part of why the video makes us uneasy is because of its low-quality image. A videotape replicates real life but also distorts it. This works perfectly for the film, as the pixelated, fuzzy image lets our imaginations fill in the blanks of the video’s flaws and creates something even scarier. Given that VHS was already decades old at the time of Ringu’s release, with DVDs gradually taking their spot as the preferred format of home entertainment, it represents the clash between old and new that is central to the film’s curse: an unexplained ancient evil contained within ubiquitous modern technology. The inner workings of the technology that we use daily elude the majority of us, with that mystery providing the space for the fear of the unknown to be exploited in horror films. This fear of technology also connects to a cultural notion that “cameras have the ability to capture a person's soul” (Duong). The idea of a benevolent spirit haunting the inside of a videotape is not a far leap from that genuine belief, making this aspect of Ringu have a level of basis in reality in terms of common fears surrounding technology, regardless of their truth. 

A subject closely related to the uncanny is Jacques Derrida’s concept of hauntology, defined as “a mode of critique that can bring about social justice and address ethical debt by acknowledging ghostly presences, or ‘those who are not there’” (Duong). This idea addresses the sense of the long-dead continuing to linger and haunt the present through a variety of means. The videotape can be a case study for hauntology, with the strongest association to the topic being that for several generations it was the primary medium of home movies. The home movie exemplifies hauntology in that it records the past and keeps the dead alive in stasis forever. One of the main purposes behind recording a home movie is existential, with the tape being an eternal window into a time before loved ones inevitably pass. This relates to what makes Ringu so terrifying because even a benign family video defies the ephemerality of the past and brings it into the present, denying death in a way. The tape at the center of the film equals a warped version of the home movie, with this technological communication with the past leading to contagious death in the present. 

The scene in which Yoichi (Rikiya Otaka) watches the tape illustrates this point about the proliferation of technology giving parents the fear of a lack of control and a sense of disconnection from their loved ones (47:41-49:21). Even as technology is a tool for connection and communication, it also eludes those same attributes when it is used in excess or for the wrong reasons. The abuse of technology, particularly as it pertains to children, is a transnational concern. This universal fear that affects parents most significantly is represented in Reiko’s (Nanako Matsushima) primary motivation of protecting her son and especially in her horror when her son is exposed to the tape that she has tried to shield him from seeing. In this scene, Reiko is instantly alerted to something wrong when she wakes up in the middle of the night to an empty room, her son no longer sleeping next to her (47:41-49:21). The comforts of domesticity are disrupted by the invasion of the technological threat, itself a visual representation of child neglect through Sadako’s (Rie Inō) presence. The mise-en-scene is designed to emphasize the extreme difference between the abnormal presence of the video and the safety of their bedroom and its dark lighting that is intended for the two of them to sleep in. The realization that her son is not in his bed is marked by the sudden frame of the cursed tape superimposed on the shot of his bed, an unsettling signal that her best efforts were not enough to protect her son. 

In her theoretical exploration of technology-based horror, Brenda S. Gardenour Walter writes that the American remake focuses even more transparently on “the cyclical nature of child abandonment and neglect in the modern home,” but the underlying themes of parental fears surrounding technology are still palpable in the original (19). There is a dualism to the neglect depicted, one being the initial abuse of Sadako at the hands of adults and the other being Reiko’s fear of repeating similar mistakes in raising her son. Technology connects the two time periods by proxy, emphasizing its real ability to flatten time but with the supernatural addition of the past exploiting modern technology to do harm in the present. 

One of the scariest scenes in the film also further drives this point of technology invading the home in a literal way, when Ryuji (Hiroyuki Sanada) succumbs to the tape’s seven-day curse (1:25:09-1:27:51). There is a notable contrast between the peace of the mostly technology-free zone of Ryuji’s home as he works on pen and paper, not a computer, and the shocking interruption of the creaking sound that signals Sadako’s presence through the television that turns on against his will. The domestic comfort of his dimly-lit, private space is disrupted by the bright artificial light of the television screen, its blue static image overwhelming the warm neutral color palette of his home. The silent peace of his environment is broken by the ringing of the telephone, another technological terror. Sadako emerges from the confines of the tape, climbing out of the television and invading his home, destroying the supposed protection that is thought to be a given to spectators watching something on a screen. 

This concept of destroying the safety barrier of the screen extends to the audience watching the film, as “the spectator is invited to wonder if, having gotten through one mediated screen, can the vengeful ghost(s) get through another—ours?” (Honisch 128). The idea that we as audience members are not protected from the horrors we witness on screen removes the emotional distance from the events in the film and allows for reflection on our own technology-based fears, apart from the supernatural. Honisch writes that the film could be a cause for self-reflection, with our “cyborgian mode of spectatorship revealing us all as part of the ‘new flesh’ so grotesquely intertwined with the disreputable pleasures of technology” (115). This scene illustrates the fear that technology can overtake our lives in unexpected and unwanted ways by breaking the internal fourth wall of the television screen and perhaps leaving the viewer with a lingering, if irrational, fear that the seven-day curse could get them next. It is also notable that this scene ends with Ryuji’s death after seeing Sadako’s eye, which fills the frame so there is no escape for the viewer to look away with their own eyes (1:25:09-1:27:51). As the eye is the body’s tool for seeing, it is a fitting cinematic weapon. Sadako’s deathly stare can be read as our complicit view of the deaths we witness as well as a gaze that is turned back onto us, giving the feeling that her eye will have a similar effect on the viewer through the screen. 

A collective, underlying fear of technology as a tool for abuse is a commonly shared anxiety that is even more palpable in a film from Ringu’s era when heightened worries around Y2K and our growing reliance on technology felt increasingly out of control. This is compounded by the knowledge that technology is a necessary tool for communication and productivity, which is shown in the film. In addition to the cursed tape, phones are a key part of Ringu, both as a communication tool to contact loved ones and as the signal that death is soon to come. There are extreme emotions at play around phones in the film, from Reiko tearfully apologizing to her son on a pay phone, believing she may never see him again, to the terror at the phone ringing after watching the tape and once when the seven-day curse reaches its end. Like the video, the phone is used to situate the terror in the uncanny valley because of its familiar-yet-distorted quality. Miscommunication is essential to technologically mediated interaction because of its intended purpose of constant connection. Though receiving unsettling phone calls from ghosts is not a relatable occurrence at face value, the anxiety surrounding answering a dreaded call or giving and receiving bad news is a real-life connection to this aspect of the film, if much less severe. 

Ringu is not just a simplistic condemnation of technology’s ubiquity in modern life, as might be interpreted. It does not convey that modern communication is a bad thing as a whole, instead, it plays into our fears of the worst-case scenario of its takeover. Through a supernatural framework, it explores how technology fundamentally changes life and the traditional structures of the family and the home and can distance us emotionally from one another even as it intends to connect. The fact that the tape requires passing on the curse by copying the tape is the film’s strongest example of the way technology makes it easier to distance ourselves from other people and any guilt in harming them. It is like a cinematic version of chain emails designed to scam anyone who opens them, commonly forwarded by well-meaning loved ones believing they have to send the message on, or else. Ringu ultimately heightens the stakes of these actual technological concerns by adding the element of death, which is the ultimate, inevitable loss of control.

Works Cited 

Duong, Lan. “Shutter.” Blackboard, uploaded by Lan Duong, 21 Sept. 2022, https://blackboard.usc.edu/. 

Honisch, Stefan Sunandan. "Music, Sound, and Noise as Bodily Disorders: Disabling the Filmic Diegesis in Hideo Nakata’s Ringu and Gore Verbinski’s The Ring." Transnational Horror Cinema. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2016, pp. 113-131. 

Walter, Brenda S. Gardenour. "Ghastly Transmissions: The Horror of Connectivity and the Transnational Flow of Fear." Transnational Horror Across Visual Media. Routledge, 2013, pp. 17-29.