Rotten Tomatoes
Cancel Movies Tv shows RT App News Showtimes

Ring 0: Birthday

Play trailer Poster for Ring 0: Birthday 2000 1h 39m Horror Mystery & Thriller Play Trailer Watchlist
Watchlist Tomatometer Popcornmeter
Tomatometer 4 Reviews 62% Popcornmeter 25,000+ Ratings
A journalist tracks a young woman who uses her supernatural powers to kill members of an acting troupe.
Watch on AMC+ Stream Now

Where to Watch

Ring 0: Birthday

Critics Reviews

View More
Grant Watson Fiction Machine 09/03/2024
5/10
An unnecessary exercise that fails to even exploit its source material. Go to Full Review
Panos Kotzathanasis Asian Movie Pulse 02/27/2022
5/10
A movie that is as underwhelming as possible, and definitely a number of levels lower than its predecessors. Go to Full Review
Christopher Null Filmcritic.com 08/28/2005
2.5/5
for about 20 minutes, we've got a cool little thriller on our hands Go to Full Review
Luke Y. Thompson LYTRules.com 02/16/2005
It's both moving and scary, with characters the viewer can genuinely care about. Go to Full Review
Read all reviews

Audience Reviews

View More
Adam B Mar 17 In a better then typical prequel in horror, this movie truly is able to add lore to the Sadako character without creating too many plot holes or being stupid. Still, a mediocre twist and lack of much action brings it down a bit. See more Josh A 10/28/2024 Wow. What an amazing film and an amazing yet tragic finale to the Ring quadrilogy (this is the last movie in the Japanese series with the name "Ring", the others are called "Sadako", besides the original 4 theatrical Japanese movies just serve as a good quadrilogy). It sort of changes how you look at some scenes in the 1998 movie, especially the actual videotape. Was the idea of there being 2 Sadakos a bit wild? Yep. But then again, it didn't impact the experience much and they merged in the end. Besides, maybe it was part of the original story (this film is based on Lemon Heart, a short story from the 4th novel in the Ring series, Birthday, which is an anthology rather than a full novel). Was it a tragic but beautiful dive into what Sadako was like when she was alive? Hell yea. It was just really well crafted and well made. It reminds me of Stranger Things: The First Shadow, a play I went to see in London a while back, which was amazing and I 100% recommend. Overall, amazing film, definitely recommend. Next up, Sadako 3D. The next 4 movies don't have the best reputations, but in the end, they're just movies. If I don't like them, I'll just ignore them. But this basically ends the original run of the Ring movies. What a great series. See more S. C 11/30/2023 A lot of it could have used some more work but some scenes are very well shot, edited and directed. The begining was a weird decision and felt out of place. The whole chase scene in the woods felt a bit like a fever dream and overwhelming. I found a few of the performances really nice but rest of it wasn't really captivating. I enjoyed that the story had dimensions to it with the theatre play. In the sequel it is stated that Sadako survived 30 years in the well and in this prequel it is made clear that she did so apparently due to her regenerative abilities, which I found cool to add. Most lacking thing is the writing. Looking at a summarized plot would be alright but when getting into detail it gets ugly. There are turns that are not well elaborated and scenes which are downright confusing. Some actors are given noticably worse scripts than others, and some are far less compelling actors than others, too. See more Justin T 06/11/2023 It is quite nicely shot, it sounded good and so on. Nothing stands out though. Where is the video tape? I understand that they were doing something different by explaining the girl in the well but this barely feels like a Ring movie. It is a pretty standard ghost story that adds little back-story to the series. It reminded me more of Carrie (1976) than anything else. There was a lack of intensity at the end and a lack of scares throughout making it worse than the predecessors. A disappointing entry into the series that solely focuses on back-story. See more 05/17/2019 A prequel that goes a radically different way. Not at all what you would expect from this mythology, but it's kind of interesting. Not at all how I would've thought Sadako to be in life. It's not much of a conventional horror movie either. It's kind of dull, trying to play up an eerie slow burn, but ultimately failing to hold my interest after a while. See more 09/07/2018 Best horror movie I have ever seen. See more Read all reviews
Ring 0: Birthday

My Rating

Read More Read Less POST RATING WRITE A REVIEW EDIT REVIEW

Movie Info

Synopsis A journalist tracks a young woman who uses her supernatural powers to kill members of an acting troupe.
Director
Norio Tsuruta
Producer
Shinji Ogawa, Masao Nagai, Takashige Ichise
Screenwriter
Hiroshi Takahashi
Production Co
20th Century Fox
Genre
Horror, Mystery & Thriller
Original Language
Japanese
Release Date (Streaming)
Oct 23, 2019
Runtime
1h 39m
Sound Mix
Surround, DTS
Aspect Ratio
Flat (1.85:1)
Most Popular at Home Now