Ring 0: Birthday

Ring 0: Birthday is a 2000 Japanese supernatural psychological thriller film. Norio Tsuruta directed it, and Hiroshi Takahashi wrote the screenplay. It adapts the short story "Lemon Heart" from Koji Suzuki's anthology *Birthday*. The film serves as a prequel to the 1998 film *Ring*, depicting Sadako Yamamura's life before the events that sealed her fate in the later series.

This film, along with *Isola*, is recognized as one of the earliest Japanese live-action psychological thrillers released in theaters. It was also the first such film in Japan during the early 2000s to earn over ¥1 billion in distribution income, preceding releases like *The Beach*, *Unbreakable*, *Vanilla Sky*, and *Panic Room*. *Ring 0: Birthday* was nominated for the 2001 Fantasporto award but lost to *Amores perros*.

The plot begins in the present, where a girl confesses to a friend that she watched the cursed videotape and has nightmares, including seeing Sadako's murder by Dr. Ikuma. Thirty years earlier, a reporter named Miyaji—whose fiancée, a fellow reporter, died during Shizuko's infamous ESP demonstration—interviews Sadako's former elementary school teacher, Sudo. Sudo recalls Sadako's withdrawn childhood and her prediction of classmates drowning during a field trip. Meanwhile, 19-year-old Sadako joins an acting troupe as an understudy. Her natural charisma angers the lead actress, Aiko, whose relationship with the troupe director, Shigemori, suffers as he favors Sadako. Aiko is later found dead, haunted by a figure in white, and Sadako takes her place. Sadako and the troupe's sound director, Hiroshi Toyama, develop a mutual attraction, disappointing costume designer Etsuko Tachihara, who loves Toyama. Though praised by Shigemori and Toyama, the other troupe members grow to distrust and fear Sadako, suspecting she caused Aiko's death and other supernatural events, including an apparition of a girl in white with long hair like Sadako's.

Miyaji learns from Sudo that Shizuko went mad before her suicide after moving in with Dr. Heihachiro Ikuma, and that Sudo heard strange childlike noises from the attic. Etsuko, seeking Sadako's origins, contacts her psychiatrist, who refuses to answer and discards a troupe poster. Miyaji's assistant retrieves the poster, allowing them to locate Sadako.