Hollywood is increasingly turning to Asian cinema to satisfy a bottomless appetite for video nasties. Gore Verbinski's The Ring is a prime example, a remake of Ringu by Japanese director Hideo Nakata. It's "disturbing stuff" that centres on Naomi Watts' efforts to uncover the mystery surrounding a videotape that brings a gruesome death to anyone who watches it. In a neat twist, Nakata has been hired to direct The Ring 2 based on his own Japanese sequel to Ringu. And round and round it goes...

Ring Road

In essence this Collector's Edition DVD is a marketing exercise to promote interest in the sequel and, as such, there's not much in the way of extras. Especially poor is The Making Of The Ring which actually has next to noting to do with the making of the film at all. It's mostly taken up with Verbinski and producer Walter F Parkes talking up Naomi Watts and Martin Henderson who were relatively new to the Hollywood scene when this was originally released. Watts herself spends barely a minute to explain that she was drawn to the project for the chance to play "a flawed character". With creative insights like this, it's not surprising that we're left none the wiser.

Don't Watch This is a more worthwhile featurette offering 14 minutes of deleted and extended scenes. It fills a few gaps for those who were baffled by the torrent of avant garde symbolism and imagery in the film, but the truth is, it raises more questions than it answers. Included in the new scenes is footage of Noah (Henderson) coming across something rotten at the innkeeper's cabin and Samara drifting through locations that seem to echo the landscapes pictured on 'that tape'. Incidentally, if you click on the chair on the main menu, you can view said tape in its full, uncut glory. A word to the wise though: make sure you've already eaten.

What Goes Around...

Raising the game for this otherwise patchy selection of bonus features is a short film titled Rings that bridges the gap between The Ring and The Ring Two. It's actually a very polished and quite suspenseful effort by upcoming young director Jonathan Liebesman. Ryan Merriman - who appears in the sequel - stars as curious teenager Jake who attempts to get to the bottom of 'the tape' brouhaha with the help of his school buddies. Even so, this will only appeal to those who are really fanatical about the franchise and the same goes for this DVD as a whole. If the urban mythology surrounding the movie doesn't engage you, then buying The Ring is not a commitment worth making.

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