The next movie follow-up to the two Hideo Nakata films was a prequel, centred on the young Sadako (Nakama Yukie) coming to less-than-thrilled terms with her newfound power. Its transmission isn’t limited to videotape either: Ring’s further instalments include devices like cloned Sadakos and a novel one of the characters writes. Across the books we gradually learn that the 'evil' itself isn’t Sadako per-se, but a psychokinetically mutated smallpox virus. Suzuki has, to date, written five Ring novels and a collection of short stories: Ring, Spiral, Loop, The Birthday, S and Tide, the last of which was published in 2013. Maybe most intriguingly, the odd business from the films hinting that Sadako’s father was some sort of sea monster is here fully explained: she’s the result of her mother uncovering a relic from the sea containing the considerable supernatural power of the historical Japanese mystic En no Ozunu.
Sadako is both beautiful and intersex (something most of the films go nowhere near) and is murdered differently, although she still ends up in the well. Various characters, names, relationships and locations are different. The basics of what are now the familiar elements of the series are here, but there are, unsurprisingly, differences too. It all starts here, with Koji Suzuki’s original novel, first published in Japan in 1991.
