What Is It With J-Horror And Outdated Technology?

IMDB listing

"'Twitter': (2020) -- a hate-filled ghost leaves incomprehensible, four-word messages. It's up to a group of 15 beautiful, attention deficit-addled teens to decipher the message word by word to foil its plot."

i 100% agree. i dunno. japan is 10 years advanced in terms of technology but when it comes to turning that tech impact on culture into movies they are usually about 10 years behind...

not just ringu..also tetsuo cud fall into that category. machines had been around for several decades and then there was the film who played on a very crude version of heavy machinery.

also the "vision" or representation of chat rooms as simplistic physical spaces i found very, very naive. it felt like someone who is used to a flat piece of paper trying to show what origami looks like (in 2d)

some good acting and cinematography of course but setdesign and script were quite awful.

If someone made that 'Twitter' I would so watch that; though it might be better when really stoned.

I found it hilarious that this film was supposedly a social commentary on 'the internet' - but I agree, why the hell choose to write about something that is now defunct and nobody uses? Ridiculous. The whole thing played out like a 17 year old media students naive attempt at being topical. Tron was more of a social commentary than this load of rubbish!


Just on a sidenote; for the VHS thing, I guess it could easily be modernised to be about a haunted 'dvd' but would that make it any more or less scarier? I thought the scariness supposedly came from the notion that something had imprinted itself onto something people would have lying around in their homes. It was more focussed on the entity making contact through the TV than through something that no one uses/would have in their home a'la 'Chatroom'.


I MEAN COME OOOON, NO ONE USES THEM ANY MORE - CHRIST!

This film isn't J-horror, sure the director is Japanese, but the nationality of a director doesn't change the genre of a film.

Yeah chatrooms are way outdated now, but when the play was written in the early 2000s, chatrooms were at the height of their popularity, i guess if the film was made and released at the same time the play was written it would be a bit more relevant

For those folks complaining that the chatroom thing, technology, or whatever, is outdated in this movie:

Why not just think that the story is supposed to be about 10 years ago??

Problem solved.

Now, try to enjoy the movie for what it's *really* about?



"I can't stand a naked light bulb, any more than..a rude remark or a vulgar action" Blanche DuBois

Ringu is from 1998 and is based upon a book from 1989.
In 1998 Video tapes were still the most common format. Actually DVD was introduced first in 1996 in Japan, 1997 in America and 1998 the same year as Ringu cam out a year when most people didn't know what a DVD. For it's time it is not dated.

Just because you don't use chat rooms it doesn't mean that there are many other people who do.

The film is also not Japanese it is an English film made by a Japanese director.

Ringu was made in 1998. Just thought I'd point that out. Back in 98 I was only just starting to buy DVDs so it still works I think and I gotta say I do think it wouldn't have worked with a haunted DVD The "feel" of it just isn't the same.

I think the same issue arises with chatrooms. A Facebook Wall movie wouldn't work as well. The feel just isn't right. Chatrooms allow for that more confined feel. The representation of rooms in a corridor wouldn't work with a Facebook wall. And a Facebook wall does not really allow for lengthy conversations. Neither would you really go and discuss private details of your life on your Facebook wall. Also, the anonymity is an issue on Facebook, but not in chatrooms. A forum perhaps might have worked, but the nature of people who connect to a forum is a bit less random since people on a forum usually talk about something specific.And chatrooms still exist today, even if they're less popular than they used to be. So I find the chatroom concept still relevant and it makes for a better movie than if they'd gone for facebook or Twitter or MySpace.

What I do agree with is that the concept was badly exploited. There was plenty of material for this to be interesting, but it just wasn't.

Eibhlinn Savage

[insert movie quote]