In 1998, director Hideo Nakata (Dark Water) unleashed a chilling tale of technological terror on unsuspecting audiences, which redefined the horror genre, launched the J-horror boom in the West and introduced a generation of moviegoers to a creepy, dark-haired girl called Sadako. 

The film’s success spawned a slew of remakes, reimaginations and imitators, but none could quite boast the power of Nakata’s original, which melded traditional Japanese folklore with contemporary anxieties about the spread of technology.