10 Overhyped Horror Movies You Wish You'd Not Watched
3. Ringu (1998)
The big daddy of contemporary J-horror, Hideo Nakata's Ringu (リング) was an international sensation upon release. And what's not to love - there's a cursed videotape, a girl in her nightie climbing out of the TV, and a rollicking mystery about the what and the why of all this to drive the plot.
Given all that promise, then, how come it's so underwhelming? Ringu got huge through word-of-mouth, referenced by many as one of the most terrifying movies ever made, and yet when it comes down it, it's just not. There's a lot of wandering around and investigating things, and not a whole lot of tension.
Where the film should be turning the screws and ratcheting up the fear factor, it gets lost in its own (relatively slender) running time, failing to deliver much in the way of TV-based shenanigans, be-nightied girls or genuine horror.
In fact, the scares are so few and far between that, pound-for-pound, the US remake (considered inferior by pretty much anyone with two eyes and a Twitter handle) has it totally outgunned. Our advice, when there are films like It Follows (2014) out there, is to just not bother at all.