10 Fantastic Asian Horror Films You Must See Before You Die
9. Ringu (1998)
The Ring, or Ringu as it's known in its native Japan, is the film that made Asia horror exports a thing and kickstarted the Asian horror remakes craze.
Nobody is going to thank it for the latter, but there are good reasons why it caught on globally, mostly because it's fricking terrifying.
You know the drill by now. Hapless victims watch a video tape and receive a phone call informing them they have seven days left to live, after which the nightmarish Sadako arrives to drag them off this mortal coil, kicking and screaming.
Ringu works as a horror on many levels, knocking bricks out of the fourth to draw the viewer in, and that sequence where Sadako crawls out of the television set makes the gogglebox in Poltergeist look completely innocuous.
The US remake it spawned in 2002 wasn't all bad, but Ringu's greatest achievement is the sense of unease we still feel every time we look at the TV in our living room.