The Ring (2002 film)

The Ring is a 2002 American remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film of the same name (also known as Ringu). Both movies are based on the novel of the same name by Kôji Suzuki. It was directed by Gore Verbinski and starred Naomi Watts and Martin Henderson.

Plot

The film focuses on a mysterious cursed videotape which contains a seemingly random series of disturbing, grainy, black and white images. After watching the tape, the viewer subsequently receives a phone call in which a voice condemns the viewer to death in exactly seven days.

As the film opens, two teenage girls Katie Embry (Amber Tamblyn) and Rebecca 'Becca' Kotler (Rachael Bella) discuss the supposedly cursed tape. Katie subsequently reveals that, seven days before, she went to a cabin at Shelter Mountain Inn with friends, where she viewed the video tape. After a series of strange occurrences, involving a television in the house turning itself on, Katie is mysteriously killed while Becca watches, subsequently causing her to be institutionalized in a mental hospital.

Katie's aunt, Rachel (Naomi Watts), is a journalist living in Seattle. At Katie's funeral, Rachel's sister asks her to investigate her daughter's death. Her investigation subsequently leads her to the cabin where Katie watched the tape. She finds and watches the tape, the phone rings and a girl says "seven days." The next day she calls her ex-boyfriend and her son Aidan's father, Noah, to see the video. He subsequently asks her to make a copy for further investigation. Unfortunately, Aidan watches the tape a couple of days later.

After viewing the tape, Rachel experiences nightmares, nose bleeds, and surreal situations (when she pauses a section of the tape in which a fly runs across the screen, she plucks it from the monitor). Rachel investigates the images on the tape, leading her to Anna Morgan (a woman seen in the tape) who lived on Moesko Island with her husband Richard and daughter. A tragedy befell the Morgan ranch, in which the horses they raised seemed to go mad, subsequently killing themselves, presumably causing Anna to become depressed and commit suicide. Rachel goes to the Morgan house and finds Richard who refuses to talk about the video or his daughter. A local doctor tells Rachel that Anna could not carry a baby to term and adopted a child named Samara Morgan (Daveigh Chase). Anna soon complained of visions that only happened when Samara was around, so both were sent to a mental institute. Noah goes to the institute, finds Anna's file and discovers that a video is missing. Rachel returns to the Morgan house, views the missing video and is confronted by Richard, who subsequently states the girl was evil. Following an intense scene, he then electrocutes himself in the bathtub, sending Rachel running out of the house screaming.

Noah arrives and with Rachel, goes to the barn to discover a room where Samara was kept by her father. Behind the wallpaper they discover an image of a tree seen on the tape, and near the cabin. At the cabin, they discover a well underneath the floor, in which Rachel finds the body of Samara, subsequently experiencing a vision of how her mother dropped her into it. Rachel notifies the authorities, and Samara is given a proper burial.

Rachel informs Aidan that they will no longer be troubled by Samara. However, Aidan is horrified, telling his mother she had freed her body, and that Samara never sleeps. In his apartment, Noah's TV turns on, revealing an image in which Samara crawls from the well, walks toward the screen and crawls out of the set into the room. Samara stares directly at him, causing his death — which Rachel discovers after racing to his apartment. Upon returning to her apartment, Rachel destroys and burns the original tape screaming, "What do you want from me!?" She soon notices the tape marked "COPY" underneath the couch. Worried that Aidan will also die, Rachel realizes the only way to escape is to copy the tape and show it to someone else, continuing the cycle. The movie subsequently ends with Rachel helping Aidan to copy the tape.

Reception

In order to advertise the film, many promotional websites were formed featuring the characters and places in the film. The film was financially successful. The success of The Ring opened the way for American remakes of several other Japanese horror films, including The Grudge and Dark Water. A sequel, The Ring Two, was released in North American theaters on March 18, 2005. It was directed by Hideo Nakata, the director of the original Japanese film.

The Ring received fairly positive reviews from film critics, receiving a “fresh” 72% favorable reviews out of 166 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, and a Metacritic score of 57/100 (mixed or average) from 36 reviews. On the television program Ebert & Roeper, Richard Roeper gave the film "Thumbs Up" and felt it was very gripping and scary despite some minor unanswered questions. Roger Ebert gave the film "Thumbs Down" and felt it was boring, borderline ridiculous and disliked the extended, detailed ending. IGN’s Jeremy Conrad praised the movie for its atmospheric set up and cinematography, and said that “there are 'disturbing images'… but the film doesn't really rely on gore to deliver the scares. … The Ring relies on atmosphere and story to deliver the jumps, not someone being cleaved in half by a glass door.” Film Threat Jim Agnew called it “dark, disturbing and original throughout. You know that you’re going to see something a little different than your usual studio crap.” Praise went to the director Gore Verbinski for slowly revealing the plot while keeping the audience interested, “the twists keep on coming, and Verbinski shows a fine-tuned gift for calibrating and manipulating viewer expectations.”

Despite the praise given to Verbinski’s direction, critics railed the characters as being weak. The Chicago Reader’s Jonathan Rosenbaurn said that the film was “an utter waste of Watts… perhaps because the script didn’t bother to give her a character,” whereas other critics such as William Arnold from Seattle Post-Intelligencer said the opposite: “she projects an intelligence, determination and resourcefulness that carry the movie nicely.” Many critics regarded David Dorfman’s character as a creepy-child “Sixth Sense cliché.” A large sum of critics, like Miami Herald’s Rene Rodriguez and USA Today’s Claudia Puig found themselves confused and thought that by the end of the movie “[the plot] still doesn't make much sense.” This movie was number 20 on the cable channel Bravo's list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

References in popular culture

Angry Alien:The popular website made its own '30-Second-With-Bunnies' version, even including the extra footage of Samara-bunny reaching out to kill the viewer. Aiden: Took their name from the child in the movie, and sampled a quote from the movie in their song "I Set My Friends On Fire". The O.C:In an episode of "The O.C", Seth Cohen (played by Adam Brody) tells Ryan Atwood not to read a letter because "it's like The Ring", if you read it you'll die." Adam Brody appeared in The Ring early in the film. Blue Collar TV:Larry the Cable Guy experiences the consequences of ignoring his wife in a sketch entitled "The Ring III: Till Death Do Us Part". After ignoring his wife's requests for housework while watching television, Larry is attacked by the aforementioned wife emerging from the television, griping about his lack of effort in their marriage.Family Guy:In the Family Guy season 5 episode "Mother Tucker," a cutaway scene shows a girl telling Peter not to watch the video tape because afterwards one dies. Despite this he turns it on and it turns out to be Mannequin. Peter dies of horror shortly after he watches the tape.The Suffering:In the PS2 version of The Suffering, there is a level with a hole blown in the wall. When the player crawls through the hole, he or she ends up in an office with a static-filled closed circuit monitor, and a red phone on the guards desk is ringing. By answering the phone, a little girl is heard saying "You will die in seven days." Will & Grace:In an episode of Will & Grace when Jack and Grace are cleaning Will and Grace's apartment, one of them happens to come across a water ring left by a glass on a wooden table. When Jack realises how Will will not take kindly to this, he exclaims, "Oh my god! First he sees the ring, and then we die..."Rugrats:The Interview with a Campfire movie in the Rugrats series featured a scene in which one of the friends went missing. When Angelica wandered around the area where the person had disappeared, the television burst into static and a cartoon version of the cursed videotape began to play.Shark Tale:A newspaper appearing in the DreamWorks film Shark Tale features an "upcoming movie" called The Hook, the ad for which looks very similar to The Ring.Scary Movie 3:The whole movie parodies The Ring and other popular films like Signs.Teen Titans:In the episode "Fear Itself", Beast Boy explains a scary movie thus: "They say when you watch this video, strange things happen" — a reference to The Ring.TimeSplitters Future Perfect:There is a television early on in the 'Haunted Mansion' level of the story mode, on which the circle of light shown in the American version of the film is played. Also, a ghost girl appears twice who bears a distinct resemblance to Samara.F.E.A.R.: The character of Alma bears several similarities to Samara, although this has been confirmed to be purely by coincidence. Both Samara and Alma are derived from the traditional Japanese horror template of little girls wearing white kimonos or robes.Dragonfable: In this online RPG, the town of Amityvale has a quest called "The Well" that spoofs The Ring, where you must go into a well full of undead to rescue the paladin, Artix, who went to retrieve a girl's ring, but has to return it in seven days. If you choose to look up the well at the beginning of the quest, you see a view identical to the 'ring' from the cursed videotape.Saturday Night Live: On February 3, 2007, an SNL Digital Short named Body Fusion was aired. The sketch, under the guise of an 1980s fitness video, was purposely altered to resemble an old, worn-out VHS tape. When SNL network NBC posted a second version of the sketch on YouTube, it contained a new ending in which, using film footage, we see the characters of The Ring to be watching the video.Gorillaz: The film clip for the Gorillaz song “Dare” includes a scene towards the end where the music stops and camera zooms into the eye of the protagonist, Noodle. This has been claimed to be directly inspired by “The Ring” in the Gorillaz Biography Rise of the Ogre.The Grim Adventures of Billy & Mandy: In one episode, Billy rents a videotape and watches it. A white ring is displayed, followed by a Chupacabra climbing out of the screen, that to suck on Billy's nose.Robot Chicken: In one short, a random guy sits down to watch videos for a dating service. When he picks one, the Ring tape plays. Samara crawls out inhumanly, looks up and talks like a sweet girl stating what she is interested in, then disappears. The guy appears horrified until he thinks gladfully what it would be like to date her, saying "I wonder if she puts out..."The Daily Show With Jon Stewart: On the July 23rd, 2007 broadcast of the news show parody, Ambassador to Iraq Ryan Crocker's faulty video address to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee was lampooned by inter-cutting the glitch-mired feed with portions of The Cursed Video. (Watch here)Kingdom of Loathing: In the MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing, there is a piece of jewellery called "The ring" which correspondingly does spooky damage, as well as having a description that describes some events on the film.Kappa Mikey: Kappa Mikey had a Halloween episode called LilyBoo, where the whole plot is related to the Ring.Cathy's Book: In the novel, Cathy writes on page 112 in different fonts 'They All Have To Die', referring to one of Samara's lines. One of these fonts is the same font used for The Ring and The Ring Two.xkcd: The xkcd comic on March 14, 2008 refers to The Ring video being uploaded onto YouTube.

See also

• List of characters in The Ring

References

External links

• the ringworld - fansite covering all aspects of the Ring series
• the Ring AREA - Contents of the cursed videos of the Ring cycle and their scene-by-scene analyses, as well as lots of other useful information.
• Trailer from Tribute.ca