- Director: Hideo Nakata
- Writers: Hiroshi Takahashi, Kôji Suzuki
- Stars: Nanako Matsushima, Miki Nakatani, Yûko Takeuchi
- Run Time; 1 Hour, 35 Minutes
Synopsis
Masami explains to her friend Tomoko that a boy went to a strange place and recorded a show on a non-working channel. There was a woman in the show who pointed at the boy and claimed, “You will die in one week,” on the videotape. The phone rang, and a voice said, “You saw it.” Then the boy died in one week. Tomoko doesn’t think the story is funny. Tomoko explains that that exact thing happened to them on their trip last week. Actually, today will be one week since that happened. The phone rings, and Tomoko starts looking very scared. Turns out, it’s just Mom. Masami leaves to go to the bathroom, and then the TV in the next room coms on all by itself. Something comes up behind her.
Before long, everyone has heard the story about the haunted video. It’s become sort of a viral story, where everyone knows someone who knows someone who died from the video. Everyone says the video aired in the Izu Peninsula.
Reiko, a reporter, is following up on the story, adds he soon leans that some of those people really have died. She goes to Tomoko’s funeral, and no one knows exactly how she died, but it was a closed-casket funeral. It turns out, several people were with Tomoko when she saw that video, and they all died in the same night.
Reiko’s son Yoichi used to play in Tomoko’s room all the time, but he’s not allowed in there now. Tomoko’s mother explains that she found her dead daughter in the closet with a frozen scream on her face. She goes to pick up some of Tomoko’s undeveloped photos, and all the children who died have smudged faces. Yoichi tells his mother that he watched the cursed video.
Reiko goes to the cabin in Izu where the story with the videotape began. She talks to the manager, who has a whole collection of videotapes, but only one of them is unlabeled. “Someone must have left it,” he says. Reiko takes it to watch. It shows a dark circle with a woman brushing her hair, people crawling around backward, the word “Eruption,” a man with a towel over his head, and a well. The image of the well breaks into static and Reiko sees someone behind her, who is gone when she looks again. The phone rings, and there’s a weird buzzing. Reiko looks at the clock, “One week!”
She gets a friend, Ryuji, to take her photo, and it comes out blurry. He thinks maybe he can track down whoever made the film, but he soon starts seeing things. Reiko gives Ryuji a copy of the video. He plays it in slow motion and the two discuss what they see.
They find a record of a long time ago, a woman predicted an eruption on a distant island. That woman in the video, Shizoku is the one who predicted it. The volcano said terrible things about her, and she threw herself into the volcano afterwards. That night, she was up to find that little Yoichi has watched the videotape. He says Tomoko told hi to watch it.
They go out to the island where the volcano erupted so long ago. Shizoku’s cousin is still alive, and she may have had a daughter. Shizuko could read minds, and Ryuji can do the same. Someone died during one of Shizuko’s psychic demonstrations, and she blamed Sadako, her secret daughter. There’s a typhoon coming, and they’re trapped on the island that night, but Sadako’s grandfather says he’ll take them in a boat to the mainland.
Ryuji and Reiko go to the cabin where this al started. They crawl under the house and Ryuji gets a psychic flashback to Shizuko’s father whacking her over the head with a shovel, pushing her into the well, covering the well, and building a cabin over it all. They open the well, and Ryuji climbs down there. They use buckets to drain the water, and it takes hours. It’s almost time for Reiko’s week to be up.
Reiko and Ryuji switch positions, and soon, she’s down in the bottom of the well, alone. She finds a slimy, decomposing skeleton down there. The time limit of Reiko’s one-week comes and goes, and she doesn’t die. They both go home, assuming everything is over and fine.
Except Ryuji’s TV comes on, and he watches Shizuko crawl out of the well and approach him. Then she crawls out of the TV and kills him. Reiko finds out what happens, and she just knows that little Yoichi is next. What did she do that Ryuji didn’t? She figures it out; she made a copy and showed it to Ryuji— she passed the curse on to someone else. Now all she has to do is spread the curse…
Commentary
It’s definitely got creepy bits to it, but I also suspect a lot got lost in the translation and subtitles. It was a little hard to follow to understand all the bits about Shizuko and Sadako and Dr. Ikuma.
Even after watching, I’m not sure if Dr. Ikuma was Shizoku’s father, and if he/they was the old man we saw so much of in the middle of the film. I suspect it was, but this is the peril of watching a subtitled film.
I can see why this was popular, and it definitely deserved the English remake a few years later. The remake added a few things and refined others, but the main plot is the same to both films.