The Ring & Spiral

Posted by Skrud at Wednesday, June 14th 2006 at 11:14pm

Since my post about Ring, I’ve seen both Ringu and The Ring, and I finished Spiral last night. Ring is now easily one of my favourite books ever.

Ringu

Ringu was weak. It took so many liberties with the story and the characters that what was left was little more than a cheesy/campy horror flick that took itself too seriously. While differences in adaptation are expected, in this case it was at the cost of good storytelling. The movie was a shallow, tepid puddle compared to the novel’s profound ocean.

But it’s not only closeness to the book that (failed to) set me off about the movie – rather, the movie was just plain boring. It didn’t evoke suspense or excitement, and it kind of drudged along with little references to videotapes thrown in…

The Ring

While The Ring took many of the same liberties as Ringu, even strayed much further from the novel than its Japanese counterpart. But in so doing, I think The Ring was much closer to the ideas and feelings in the original novel. Not only that, but The Ring was extremely well-made and well-executed. It was tense, suspenseful, and even scary at times. Hell, it was great!

Still, if you enjoyed the Ring, I urge you to read Ring. The book isn’t scary, but it is suspenseful. It is also fucking awesome.

Spiral

Spiral is the written sequel to Ring. Before you start thinking that this has something to do with The Ring 2 (which I haven’t seen yet), you should be aware that The Ring 2 is a completely original story and has nothing to do with any book.

Spiral was more than a worth sequel to Ring. It takes the events of Ring and puts a whole new perspective on it. There’s a new set of characters interacting with artifacts from the previous novel, trying to piece together the mystery of The Ring using new information… And it’s a helluva lot creepier than Ring.

One thing I like about Kôji Suzuki’s writing is that he doesn’t take himself too seriously, and he’s able to make seemingly tongue-in-cheek references to his own writing while keeping the story gripping, suspenseful and eerie. I won’t say any more than that for fear of spoiling parts of the book – but you should all read Ring and then Spiral. Everyone should read them – these books are so damn good.

Now it’s time to get started on the third book in the series, Loop, which I ordered from Amazon in hardcover because I couldn’t wait until October for the paperback release. I don’t know anything about Loop other than the fact that in the inside dust-jacket cover is written RING + SPIRAL < LOOP. Sweet.

I have no idea how I’m going to survive the wait for Birthday , the prequel, which comes out in December…

Tags: books, japanese, movies