Title(s): The Ring: Virus
Film Director(s): Kim Dong-Bin

Released: 1999 [Korea]
Genre: Horror
Sub-Genre: Mystery

Overview:
Based on the bestselling novel by Japanese author Suzuki Koji, this film has been described as "thoroughly chilling" by more people than we can count. We tend to agree, having been "thoroughly chilled" by it ourselves--and pleasantly surprised by its artistic direction and emotive acting. This Korean neo-film noir draws you into its bleak world quickly, and holds you there easily until the shocking end.

The story centers around a female journalist who discovers a mysterious videotape that promises its viewers will die within a week of seeing it, unless they... That's right, the end of the tape is cut off, leaving our antagonist scrambling frantically to solve its mystery before her final week runs out. From the second she finishes watching the short tape, the clock is ticking; and it becomes a desperate struggle to find and convince new allies to help her solve the puzzle, without showing them the tape. Luckily, she happens upon a rather morbid doctor with a soft spot for the supernatural. In his own letcherous and condescending way, he agrees to help her solve the puzzle, and from then on they are a team.

Will they solve the deadly puzzle before time runs out? Will they be able to keep the videotape from falling into unsuspecting or malicious hands? And what evils will they unearth in their quest? You won't be able to tear yourself away from this thriller for a second...so you'd better not start it while you're home alone.

Cast: Shin Eun-Kyung, Jeong Jin-Young, Bae Doo-Na, Kim Chang-Wan. . .

taken from: http://www.hkflix.com/xq/asp/filmID.1461/qx/details.htm

IMO:
its really hard to judge this movie when its a exact remake of the original ring by the japanese... because you know what exactly is going to happen and she wun die when she's supposed to and he was going to die when everyone thought he was safe... you wun find any more thrill or shocks if you have watched the ring before...

if you would view both of them as two complete separate films, i will still go for the japanese one... simply because japanese people are much more sicker than koreans... they like the thought of making grown-ups scared out of their wits... the japanese version of the ring has extremely eerie sound effects, better performances from the cast, and of course the actress who played sadako... sadako is an expert in crawling based on her attempts at climbing out of the well and by right she should stick to crawling once she manages to get out... but that wasnt the case with eun-suh (korean's sadako)... once she's out, she can start walking like any normal person without too many distorted moves...

when theres no distorted moves, viewers are not going to squirm and start to shiver anything like that... cant be helped la, bae doo na is too cute to be the ghost... lol... and what, my wife is a gangster is the single mother... LOL

Rating:
2 1/2 out of 5 snoopys