Rasen is a 1998 Japanese horror film by Joji Iida that continues Ring through a pathologist who uncovers Sadako’s plan to be reborn.
At a glance
- Director: Joji (George) Iida
- Writer: Joji Iida, adapting the novel Spiral by Koji Suzuki
- Cast: Kōichi Satō, Miki Nakatani, Hinako Saeki, Shingo Tsurumi, Yutaka Matsushige, Hiroyuki Sanada
- Release: January 31, 1998 (Japan)
- Runtime: 98 minutes
- Studio: Ring/Spiral Production Committee, distributed by Toho
- Franchise: Ring franchise
- Also known as: Spiral, The Spiral
Overview
Rasen opened in Japanese cinemas on the same day as Ringu, sold as a double bill so that audiences could watch the cursed videotape story and its continuation back to back. The plan backfired. Hideo Nakata’s film became a phenomenon, while Iida’s chillier, more clinical sequel was quickly overshadowed and then officially sidelined when the studio commissioned a different follow-up. Seen today, Rasen is a strange and fascinating detour: less a ghost story than a medical mystery about grief, contagion and resurrection, and much closer to Koji Suzuki’s novels than the films that replaced it.
Plot summary
The story begins where Ring ends. Ryūji Takayama is dead, and his autopsy falls to Mitsuo Andō, a pathologist and former classmate who is still numb from the drowning of his own young son. Inside Ryūji’s stomach Andō finds a cryptic note, the first of several clues that seem to have been left for him personally.
Soon Reiko Asakawa and her boy Yōichi are found dead as well. With the help of Mai Takano, Ryūji’s student and girlfriend, Andō traces the deaths to the tape and to the woman behind it, Sadako Yamamura. Reiko’s editor Yoshino gives him her diary, a detailed record of her investigation, and Andō reads it. Then he watches the tape, half out of curiosity and half out of a death wish. He destroys every copy he can find, sleeps with Mai, and waits for the week to run out.
Spoiler section: the ending
Andō survives his week, but Mai does not. She is found dead after giving birth, with no infant in sight. When “Mai” reappears at the hospital, she is Sadako, regrown in a new body. The curse has mutated: Reiko’s written account, not only the video, now carries the virus, which means any record of Sadako can spread her. Ryūji had been helping Sadako all along. She offers Andō the one thing he wants, his dead son, and he accepts. In the final scenes Andō brings Ryūji and the boy back to life, and Ryūji warns that years will pass before the world knows peace.
Production and behind the scenes
Producer Takashige Ichise and the team behind Ring shot both films in parallel with a shared crew and a few overlapping actors, but gave each its own director and writer. Hiroshi Takahashi and Hideo Nakata handled Ring; Iida wrote and directed Rasen himself. Hiroyuki Sanada returned as Ryūji, and Daisuke Ban appeared as Heihachiro Ikuma, the scientist tied to Sadako’s mother. Iida kept the palette cold and the pacing deliberate, leaning on autopsy rooms and laboratory imagery rather than the haunted-house shocks that made Nakata’s film famous.
Themes
Where Ring is about a mother protecting her child, Rasen is about a father who cannot let his go. Andō’s grief makes him the ideal partner for Sadako, who understands precisely what to offer him. The film treats the curse as biology, a virus that rewrites itself to survive, and its quiet suggestion that a written report can be as deadly as a videotape gives the story an unsettling literary edge. It is a horror film about information that refuses to stay contained.
Release and reception
Toho released Rasen on January 31, 1998. DreamWorks issued it on DVD in the United States on August 23, 2005, under the transliterated title Rasen, and Arrow Video later restored it on Blu-ray as Spiral, including it in its Ring Collection box set. Critics have generally treated it as a curiosity. Den of Geek called it “neither as poor as its reputation suggests or a long lost gem,” which remains a fair summary.
Place in the franchise
After Rasen underperformed, Takahashi and Nakata made Ring 2 in 1999, an original story that ignores Andō entirely. Rasen’s continuity was effectively abandoned, though a later entry, Sadako 3D, brought back Andō’s son Takanori as a character. Fans who want to understand Sadako Yamamura as Suzuki imagined her, a figure of biology and rebirth rather than pure vengeance, will find Rasen the most faithful screen version of that idea.
Trivia
- Rasen and Ring premiered together on January 31, 1998, as a paired theatrical release.
- Iida is the only person credited with the screenplay, unlike Ring, which was scripted by Hiroshi Takahashi.
- Hinako Saeki plays Sadako here, while Rie Inō played her in Ring the same day, so two different Sadakos premiered side by side.
- Miki Nakatani plays Mai Takano here and also played Mai in Ring 2, which rewrote her story completely.
- The 2005 US DVD came from DreamWorks, the studio behind the American remake The Ring.
- A Japanese television series also titled Rasen aired in 1999, with Tae Kimura as Sadako.
- In some English markets the film was retitled The Spiral, the name printed in English on the Japanese poster.