Who played the girl from the bell. Ancient History of the Nightmare Girl

The girl from “The Ring” is considered one of the most terrifying antagonist characters in the history of 21st century cinema. Samara Morgan - dead child, who seems to live in a videotape, but sometimes comes out into our world in order to take the lives of his victims.

Birth and being

Samara, who had not yet been born, was carried by a woman according to Osorio, who lived in a monastic orphanage. During pregnancy, she was tormented by terrible visions that developed into hallucinations. Having given birth to a daughter in 1970, on February 8, Evelyn realized that it was the child who was behind all her horrors.

Wanting to save herself, she decided to drown her own child in the fountain, but the nuns did not allow her to complete what she started. So Samara was separated from her own mother, sending the first to an orphanage, and the second to a psychiatric clinic. All these events can be learned from the second part of the film - “Ring 2”.

New family

As we know, the girl from “The Ring” has the surname Morgan, and she received it from her adoptive parents. When she was about 7 years old, a family, not very young, but childless and very wealthy, took this “strange” child under their wing. The Morgans were the owners of a huge ranch on Moesco Island, where they lived a large number of horses.

His wife, Anna, was a first-class horsewoman, and her husband Richard loved to care for animals and keep them in good condition. in the required form. Their life was measured and harmonious, both were incredibly happy, but they were never able to experience the joys of motherhood and fatherhood.

Destroyed idyll

And then a miracle appears in their life - Samara Morgan, a child whom Anna loved very much. In the first part of the film, from the story of Richard's father, we learn that the girl from “The Ring” never slept. This feature was the most frightening for parents. Gradually, she began to drive her adoptive mother crazy, “introducing” into her consciousness the same frightening visions that she saw dear mother. Similar hallucinations tormented the horses, which, unable to withstand such horror, rushed off the cliff. Anna could not cope with all this, and she and her daughter were sent to a clinic for the mentally ill.

Thermography

In the real world, thermal imaging can only be obtained using special technology. But the girl from the movie “The Ring” had projection thermography. In other words, she had the power to “burn” any image into any surface, film, and even into the minds of other living beings. That's why both her mothers suffered from terrible visions, that's what drove all the horses crazy.

Samara's abilities also show up on the X-ray sheets. During the examination, the doctor looks at the children's drawings, asking the child where they came from. And she replies: “I just think, and they appear.” However, the girl from “The Ring” creates the most terrible projection thermography after passing into another world. This is a death tape, after watching which everyone is doomed to death.

Murder of Samara

Time passes, and Anna Morgan and her daughter are discharged home. Father is building a room for Samara under the very roof of the hangar, which can only be reached by a very high stepladder. In this very cute and even, one might say, fabulous “chamber” the child spends the rest of his life. Subsequently, it turns out that in her nursery, on the wall, she burned a Japanese tree, which is one of the symbols of the film and is found in the “film of death.” But this doesn’t stop Anna’s nightmares, and she gets rid of her daughter by throwing her to the bottom of the well. The girl from “The Ring” has been living in darkness, water and fear for the last 7 days.

A cassette with a strange recording

On the “death film” various moments from Samara’s life are recorded in short frames. At the very end we see a white circle - this is a well closing from the inside. Some moments in this video are dynamic, for example, Anna combing her hair, or the movements of severed fingers, but there are also static ones - a chair, the window of the Morgan house and the girl herself from “The Ring”.

The photo seems to be static, but due to poor quality it jerks unnaturally, thereby inflicting even more fear on the viewer. After watching the mini-movie, you are told that you will die in 7 days. At the end of the first part of the film, the main character, Rachel Keller, guessed that a person was given a week, because Samara herself, having fallen into the well, existed there for exactly that amount of time.

The role and its performer

Of course, Samara Morgan is an incredibly scary person, but you will look at her from a different perspective if you find out who she really is. The actress who played the girl in “The Ring” is a pretty girl named She is an American, born in 1990 in Las Vegas. From early childhood, Davey showed artistic abilities, so she played musical theater"Utah".

The role of the child from hell is the darkest of her career. Years earlier, we met her in the film “Donnie Darko,” where she played the main character’s sister. Afterwards the sequel film “S. Darko”, where Samantha is already the main character who has to save the world, as her older brother Donnie did before. In addition, the viewer is incredibly familiar with Chase’s voice, because it was she who voiced Lilo in the childhood cartoon “Lilo and Stitch.”

Sadako Yamamura and her “friend” from the USA Samara Morgan appeared in many people’s nightmares. The character has become iconic and very popular at Halloween. Fortunately, to dress up as one of the most frightening movie characters, you only need to not wash your hair for a couple of weeks and put on an old, unwashed sheet. Samara Morgan returns to the big screen today. In the new film by F. Javier Gutierrez, it was finally digitized, and now deadly spam is circulating on the Internet. In general, with the advent of smartphones and tablets in our lives, Samara becomes omnipotent. She can come out from anywhere, anywhere... even from the navigation panel screen of an airplane.

But let's go back to the times when Samara and Sadako had nowhere to climb, and digital media and video cassettes had not yet been invented - to 1913. Then in Japan, scientist Tomokichi Fukurai was engaged in psychological research. He was one of the leaders in this field, worked at the university and read Western literature, which he willingly translated into Japanese. However, he was fascinated not by traditional psychology, but by that which was paranormal in nature. In particular, Fukurai tried to scientifically substantiate the existence of such phenomena as clairvoyance and thought graphics.

We all know very well what clairvoyance is; we regularly see “clairvoyants” at the “Battle of Psychics.” These include mediums, telepaths, fortune tellers, and other individuals who receive information in ways inaccessible to ordinary people. Thoughtgraphy is a less common phenomenon, and few have mastered it in the entire history of extrasensory perception. This skill consists of projecting images onto paper or a photographic panel with the power of thought. A professor at Tokyo Imperial University described his research in the 1913 book Clairvoyance and Thoughtography. It was criticized for being unscientific, and the leadership educational institution even asked Fukurai to leave after he made his “fraudulent works” public. He was accused of denigrating the reputation of Japanese psychology. Fukurai became persona non grata. Professors were not even mentioned in psychology textbooks until the 90s. And when the references appeared, Koji Suzuki came across them.

The author of “The Ring” made two of Fukurai’s wards the prototypes of his heroes. The stories of Chizuko Mifune and Sadako Takahashi, who lived at the beginning of the 20th century, formed the basis of a fictional biography of the Yamamura (or Morgan in the American version) dynasty. IN real life they had no relationship, but in the book and film they became mother and daughter.

Mifune was born in 1886 in the village of Kumamoto, in western Japan. She was described as a deeply religious and very vulnerable girl. Her half-brother was interested in hypnosis, and when Chizuko was 22 years old, he conducted a hypnosis session with her. The girl was told that she was clairvoyant. Oddly enough, it worked. In 1909, she became a local celebrity and neighbors flocked to visit her. Chizuko was a human x-ray and supposedly could use touch to determine what and where a person was hurting. In 1910, Professor Fukurai was told about Chizuko. He personally went to the outback to give the girl a check.

The scientist was skeptical about Chizuko and thought that he would quickly return to Tokyo without experiencing much disappointment. But everything turned out differently. Fukurai laid out envelopes in front of Chizuko, inside of which there were pieces of paper with inscriptions in Chinese - Mifune read them. Then the professor suspected that when touching the envelope, the girl simply felt the barely bulging ink with her fingers and guessed the letters. He covered the envelope with a cloth, but the result remained the same. The experiment was repeated 10 times - only then did Fukurai finally become convinced of Chizuko’s abilities. Further research was carried out with the participation of another academician, Shinkichi Imamura from Kyoto. He was a doctor and monitored Mifune's condition. Side effect Imamura called clairvoyance feelings of emotional and physical fatigue.

Then began trips to demonstrate Mifune's abilities to learned minds and the press. The psychic girl visited Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo. Fukurai gradually complicated the program, changing the envelope to a tin can and even a lead pipe. Why such difficulties? The fact is that Chizuko’s public appearances were not successful. She couldn't concentrate and made mistakes. Therefore, she retired and after a while came out to the audience, naming the correct answer. Of course, Fukurai and Mifune were accused of fraud. Then the tandem began to seal the envelopes and show that the seal and the envelope itself were intact. Another version has emerged: there are two envelopes, and the girl replaces them when she retires. To eliminate all doubts, Fukurai turned to a lead pipe, which could only be opened with a saw. Alas, here Mifune gave up and was unable to read the letters in two out of three attempts. So the sensation turned into a swindle.

On January 18, 1911, Mifune died. She was poisoned. There are several versions of what led to this act. The first is shame and oppression of public opinion. The second is accusations of an intimate relationship with Tomokichi Fukurai, which caused Mifune to have problems in the family.

And now about the main thing - about the direct prototype of Sadako and Samara. After Chizuko Mifune, Professor Fukurai switched to other psychics. One of them was the girl Sadako Takahashi. He did the same experiments with her as with Mifune. Suspecting that lead was too dense to allow psychics (and Superman) to see through it, Fukurai returned to paper envelopes and cloth. But in order to maintain the purity of the experiment, he began to use photographic panels rather than paper. If the subject opens the envelope and takes out the plate, it lights up, thereby exposing the trick.

Sadako did not reach the plate. Moreover, Fukurai claims that she complemented her. The scientist said that the tests resembled a spiritualistic session of a medium. The girl went into a kind of trance, moved her hand over the envelope and read what was written. When he checked the plate, he saw something on it that he had not written. Then Fukurai changed the method. He put half of the hieroglyph on the plate, and Sadako herself completed the second half. The more trials there were, the clearer the second half of the hieroglyph was. Over time, Sadako and Chizuko progressed to complete phrases. Chizuko no longer presented his ward to the court of academicians. Either he was afraid for her health, or there was a catch. Instead of public trials, he went on tour with her, staging paid “performances.” The collaboration ended in 1924 when Sadako died of tuberculosis.

As far as you know, clairvoyance has not yet been scientifically confirmed or disproved. There is, of course, more skepticism than faith, but no one has really succeeded in bringing all psychics out into the open. It’s the same story with thoughtography. There are many ways to perform a “thoughtgraphic” trick - from prepared double photo panels to an illusionistic device that places the desired photo panel in your hand. However, at the beginning of the 20th century, no one caught Sadako Takahashi’s hand, so it is unknown whether this is quackery or really magic.

What did Sadako look like at the beginning of the 20th century? Not like in "Calls". She was an ordinary girl. The filmmakers and the author of the novel endowed her with a colorful and frightening image. This is how the ghosts of yurei and onre are depicted in Japanese tradition. White robe, black hair, pale face. Koji Suzuki was conservative, like his followers from the world of cinema.

By the way, in the book Sadako was not even a villain. The author portrayed her as an exhausted girl (not a girl) who died a terrible death. Smallpox killed the girl. The virus “mixed” with her psychic abilities, giving birth to the Ring-Virus. The infection spread through a video recording, the description of which takes up 9 pages in the book. The recording, of course, appeared in a mental graphic way. Those who watched the video developed a ring around their heart (hence the name Ring), which contracted over the course of seven days, eventually causing a myocardial infarction.

It turns out that Sadako is actually a good, innocent girl. But they are still afraid of her to death...

The story of "The Ring" was born from a retelling of an ancient Japanese fairy tale about an evil ghost and has been scaring viewers around the world for a quarter of a century with a hairy girl crawling out of televisions in search of her victims. A huge mythology has already grown up around films and books: somewhere a terrible curse is to blame for everything, somewhere a virus is to blame, and somewhere everything that happens is just part virtual reality. To avoid getting lost in dozens of plots on the day of the release of the new film in the “Ring” series, Life introduces readers to all the important events of the series.

The Tale of the Plates

The story of "Calls" originates in an ancient Japanese fairy tale. Moreover, in one of the most popular and famous in Japanese culture: “Plates of the Bancho Estate”. The fairy tale is not the kindest, and it’s difficult to call it children’s. It tells about the maid Okiko, who took care of a samurai named Aoyama Tessan. Tessan, in response, behaved not quite decently: he constantly pestered and tormented with slippery hints. Okiko remained cold. Her upbringing did not allow her to get involved in love stories with samurai.

Okiko's constant refusals drove Aoyama into a frenzy, and the samurai decided to use a trick: he hid one of the ten porcelain plates of the family set. The plates were not ordinary: real heirlooms from rare imported Delft porcelain. Then the samurai, as if by chance, asked Okiko to count these same plates.

The maid obediently obeyed. When There were nine plates, she almost went crazy with horror. In the rather cruel Japanese legislation of those times, servants faced death for the loss of things of such importance. Okiko, enchanted, spent the whole evening counting the plates, unable to stop, but in the end she realized that one of them had really disappeared.

The tearful maid ran to her master and begged for forgiveness. Aoyama offered to close his eyes to the problem if Okiko still favorably accepted his advances and allowed them to become lovers. However, Okiko, after weighing the pros and cons, refused the samurai. He became completely furious and threw her into the well to meet certain death.

Having died, Okiko turned into onryo - a vengeful spirit who came to the samurai’s home, counted to nine, and then uttered a hellish scream that woke up all the inhabitants of the house. They managed to get rid of her only after the exorcist invited to the house loudly finished counting Okiko, exclaiming “ten” and thereby calming her spirit. The maid thought that someone had found the missing plate after all, and did not come again.

The tale of Okiko is so firmly ingrained in the minds of the Japanese that it almost always comes to mind when they see wells. In 1795, when several wells in the country were infected with a dangerous worm, it was immediately called Okiko-mushi - “Okiko worm”, and the villagers seriously convinced each other that the infection was the reincarnation of a deceased servant who continued to take revenge on the Japanese.

Books about viruses and virtual reality

The author of six novels in the Ring series, Koji Suzuki, has never written another book in his life. The Japanese's irrepressible imagination has already cemented him in history as the most original oriental science fiction writer. beginning of the XXI century. In his novels, he carefully crossed traditional Japanese horror with supercomputers, virtual reality and cloning.

The first book in the series, called "The Ring," told a very simple story. There is a legend going around Tokyo about a cursed videotape that kills everyone who watches it. The main character Kazuyuki watches the tape and, having received a seven-day sentence from otherworldly forces before death, goes to investigate the circumstances of its creation. On the way, he captures his friend Ryuji, who also watched the ominous film and received a warning that he had seven days to live.

The investigation leads the friends to the Japanese outback, where the couple learns about a woman named Shizuko and her daughter Sadako. It is Sadako who appears on a mysterious tape and kills teenagers throughout Japan. Having found Sadako's remains, they give her a proper burial and return home, confident that the curse has ended. In the end it turns out that the only way to remove the curse was to record a copy of the tape and show it to another person, turning the attention of the evil spirit to him. But it’s too late - Ryuji realizes this on the eve of the expiration of the week’s deadline and dies.

The second book, "Spiral", begins romantically - with the autopsy of the hero of the first. The main character turns out to be Ando, ​​a pathologist and former classmate of poor fellow Ryuji from the original novel. The autopsy is not without surprises. It turns out that after watching the tape, Ryuji became infected with the so-called ring virus, which grew a tumor in his throat, due to which he died. During the investigation, it turns out that the virus can be spread in any way: by video tape, audio signal or even text. Moreover, girls infected with the “ring” during ovulation, in as soon as possible They give birth to clones of the dead Sadako.

In the end, it turns out that Ryuji agreed with the no longer so dead girl Sadako that in exchange for his own resurrection, he will help her spread the virus throughout the planet. The messages he left for Ando in his corpse help bring about the inevitable end of the world: the world is being taken over by Sadako's clones.

All this ceases to have any meaning in the third book, entitled "The Loop". It turns out that the events of the first two took place inside a virtual reality simulation created in order to find a cure for a terrible disease called metastatic cancer. The novels are madly intertwined at every opportunity, for example, when it turns out that the cancer epidemic came from virtual reality into ours.

Suzuki's next three books test the reader's strength with the craziest stories, further complicating the plot, which already in the second book becomes overloaded with details, characters and their relationships. For example, in the last book in the series today called “Waves” main character suffers because he cannot sort out his memories: one half belongs to the hero of the first book, and the second to the hero of the second.

Even Suzuki's devoted readers agree that the Japanese should have stopped with the second book. But the circulation of each new history from the world of virtual reality and dangerous viruses continue to please the publisher.

Movie

To date, twelve films based on Suzuki's novels have been released. The third book, which clearly cites “The Matrix” with its computer layers of reality, was not taken on by any director: the plot was too complex for viewers accustomed to simple horror stories.

Of all the variety of film adaptations of “The Ring,” experts recommend two: the Japanese director Hideo Nakata’s 1998 film and the legendary horror film by Gore Verbinski from 2002. They tell the story from the first book, but in their own individual ways. Nakata made a film that most accurately reflects the traditions of Eastern horror, where the viewer's horror is born not from stupid scarecrows, but from fear of demonic forces doing the impossible. And Verbinski adapts Japanese traditions on American soil with such diligence and care that the film will be quoted in parodies for another decade, continuing to be called one of the most terrible creations of Hollywood of the 2000s.

The remaining films based on "Rings" deserve the attention of only very dedicated fans. Except perhaps for the recent film "Kayako vs. Sadako", in which, in a battle for the nerves of the audience, Sadako met with her main rival - Kayako, a girl from the "Curse" series of horror films. The film was released in Russia under the title “The Damned: Confrontation.” In the end, by the way, friendship literally won.

From the well to the screens

In any case, horror knows few examples of such popularity as "Rings". The complex story of the series, born from an old Japanese fairy tale, reflected in books and films, has not ended for 26 years. Sadako is quite a veteran of horror stories, on par with Freddy Krueger or Jason Voorhees from Friday the 13th.

And it will continue to do so, apparently, coming to screens year after year in new forms, continuing to scare horror fans out of their wits. Because her curse must be passed on.