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Continuity mistake: When Reiko picks up Tomoko's photos from the shop and is going through them, the way she's holding them changes subtly as it cuts back and forth from the over-the-shoulder shot to the low-angle-looking-up shot. (Most noticeably, in the over-the-shoulder shot, she has one photo pulled to the side but it's not pulled to the side in the low-angle shots).

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Continuity mistake: During the funeral, Reiko goes outside and sees a condolence sign from Tomoko's school. In the first shot, she's not casting a shadow on it. The camera cuts to the opposite angle, and you can see for a second that she's suddenly partially casting a shadow on the edge of it. (Presumably because they adjusted the lighting in-between shots when they changed the camera angle).

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Continuity mistake: When Yoichi is first introduced, he stands up from a chair. The camera cuts to the opposite angle, and suddenly his body has rotated about 90° towards his mom between cuts.

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Continuity mistake: When Reiko is at her job at the beginning of the movie after interviewing the school-girls, the extras behind them are not consistent when it cuts from the wide to medium shot. Several of them are in different places and are doing different things.

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Continuity mistake: When Reiko is introduced doing an interview with a schoolgirl, her cameraman suddenly moves back about a foot between shots after he tells the girl not to look at the camera, and they resume the interview. In the first shot, the lens of his camera is literally touching Reiko's shoulder... in the next, it's a good 12" behind her.

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Continuity mistake: In the opening scene, there are two magnets on the refrigerator that look like cheese-wedges. They change positions twice during the scene. They rotate and move down about a half-inch at one point. Then, a few shots later, they are suddenly much closer together.

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Continuity mistake: In the opening, there's a can of Planters peanuts on the table while Tomoko and Masami are talking about the cursed tape. When Tomoko gets off her chair and down on the floor, the can suddenly rotates about 45° from where it was a few shots prior. There's no indication that Masami touched it at all while it was briefly offscreen. (Best I can figure is that it might have gotten nudged between takes).

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Trivia: Sadako's mother, Shizuko, was loosely based on a real person - Chizuko Mifune. Mifune was a self-proclaimed psychic. Just like Shizuko in the film, in real life Mifune took part in a press event to prove her abilities, but was labeled a fraud by reporters, and later committed suicide.

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Trivia: During the climax, Sadako's unnatural movement was accomplished with a very simple in-camera effect - the actress performed the scene backwards. The footage was then reversed, which gave her movements an uncanny feeling, since they weren't quite "right." In addition, to further aid in giving her an uncanny appearance, the closeup of her eyeball in the final scenes of the film were actually shot with a male actor's eye... again to subtly make it feel not quite "right."

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Trivia: The film is loosely based on an ongoing series of novels by Japanese author Koji Suzuki. While the film shares the basic premise of the novels, the details are vastly different. (Notably, the books feature heavy and increasing science-fiction overtones that are absent from the films.) The American remake, "The Ring," is based more directly on this film and its sequel "Ringu 2" than the novels.

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Question: This may be weirdly specific, but does anyone know what the two background music clips from the Region 1 DVD menu are from? There's two different songs - one is a short, creepy 5-second clip that plays when you hit "Play Movie," and the other is the general background music from the DVD menu, which is a sort-of slow, sad guitar piece. I'm assuming they're just royalty free music from a collection of some sort, but I quite enjoy them.

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