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What's the Story, Mornin' Glory?
Rasen: The Spiral
(1998)
Mitsuo Ando (Koichi Sato) is a pathologist in a hospital. Ando has been severely depressed and suicidal since his son drowned two years prior. One morning he attempts to slash his wrists, but can’t find the strength to go through with it, so he gets dressed and gets ready for work. Before he leaves he receives a phone call from a colleague who tells him that their old classmate Ryuji Takayami (Hiroyuki Sanada) has died mysteriously and Ando is the one who has to do the autopsy.
While performing the autopsy Ryuji sits up and openly mocks Ando for not being able to kill himself. Startled, Ando accidentally knocks over a tray and when he looks up, Ryuji is just as dead as when they started. One of his assistants hands him a small bowl with stomach lining and a piece of paper with numbers written on it that they had found in his stomach. When the police ask him about Ryuji, Ando tells them that the cause of death was a heart attack. The police ask Ando if he’ll interview Ryuji’s girlfriend Mai Takano (Miki Nakatani) for any more evidence. Mai tells Ando that Ryuji and his ex-wife Reiko were investigating a videotape before he died. The videotape killed whoever watched the tape and that’s why he died. Ando doesn’t believe her, but she does remind him of all the code deciphering he and Ryuji used to do in med school. He uses the methods they used then on the piece of paper found in his stomach. The first line says “DNA” but he quickly dismisses it.
A few days later Reiko and her son turn up dead from a car accident, but the DNA suggests that the boy was dead before the car crashed. Inside the car was a crushed video. Later a reporter that worked with Reiko tells Ando about the origin of the videotape according to Reiko’s notebook and gives him a copy of the tape found in Reiko’s apartment. Ando watches the tape after cracking the rest of the code found in Ryuji’s stomach, thinking it was Ryuji’s will. After watching the tape he has a vision of the demise of Sadako (the girl in the video), basically explaining what took Reiko and Ryuji an entire movie to figure out. Ando accepts his fate, but wants to destroy all the tapes before he dies. However, after destroying all the tapes, people are still dying mysteriously and he’s also afraid of dying. He seeks comfort in Mai’s arms, but a night of lovemaking sets of an unfortunate chain of events that will change the human race forever.
You Learn Something New Everyday...
 Keeping locks of hair of dead people is creepy.
After attempting suicide, it's best just to go to work.
Why give evidence to the police when you can give it to a uninvolved doctor.
Dead people drive Nissan Pathfinders.
Zing!
"Take some of that jellyfish DNA and brighten up." -Ando’s colleague.
Survey SAYS...
Rasen is the orginal sequel to Ringu. It follows the sequel book to Ringu called Spiral. Apparently fans of Ringu didn't recieve this movie well and that's why they made the movie Ringu 2. I can't imagine why fans of Ringu didn't like Rasen...
Maybe because...
Rasen was not scary. It was more like a Japanese version of Diagnosis Murder. Movies really shouldn’t claim to be SEQUELS if they’re not going to be anything like the original. “Based on” would probably be more appropriate. I’m not really sure what kind of mood this movie was trying to accomplish, but I found it boring and a bit dry. Rasen was not thrilling or psychological because if you’ve seen any other Ring movie, you know what’s going on and even if you haven’t seen those movies, they give you a nice little recap partway through, so no mysteries here.
What they’re really trying to do here is say that it’s not the video itself that’s killing people but a virus that you get through the eyes after viewing that video. I’m no doctor, but that sounds like it’s pretty implausible. In fact, it doesn’t make any sense to me. With that logic you could just look at the actual tape and get the virus. ALSO, not only can you get the virus from watching the videotape, you can get it from reading Reiko’s notes on the video and experiences with Sadako. Now, if that wasn’t ridiculous enough, basically the only way to get rid of this virus is to impregnate someone, but the pregnancy will only last a few days and the woman will give birth to a full sized human and die. Yup. You read that right. Oh, and the virus is small pox or tuberculosis. Aren’t those curable?
The end drags on and on with them in the well with the reborn Sadako and then on the beach with the dead people. Then they throw cloning into the mix. Alright, WTF man! This pathologist would rather clone and bring back his already dead son then save all of humanity and no one stops him. How is that a fair trade? And there’s no cure for this virus, they’re just gonna hope that human DNA will evolve, but at least they’ll understand Sadako’s fear. Lame. Was this movie supposed to resemble the original Ringu in any way or is this like Halloween 3, where it has the same title, but it’s a different movie. If you like...full sized babies, cloning, corpses that sit up, and being turned on by the phrase “You smell like a corpse,” then this is the flick for you. As for us...we give Rasen: The Spiral
That Wasn't so Bad Was It?
I was left Feeling: "Riiiiiiiiight..."
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