The Ring (2002 film)

Plot

Katie Embry (Amber Tamblyn) and her friend Becca (Rachael Bella) are having a sleepover in Beccas home in Washington. Becca recounts the story of a supposedly cursed videotape. Anyone who watches the tape gets a mysterious phone call and then dies seven days later. Katie reveals that she had watched the tape the previous week. The phone rings, startling the girls, but it is only Katies mom. After talking with her mother, Katie returns upstairs and sees an image of a well on her TV screen and screams and in the process, her face mutates and distorts. Katie ultimately dies of a heart attack under mysterious circumstances.

Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) is a journalist living in nearby Seattle. She goes to pick up her young son, Aidan (David Dorfman) from school and finds out from his teacher that he has been drawing disturbing pictures of his cousin Katies mysterious death, some of which mysteriously predated it. They later attend her wake where Rachel finds out from her sister Ruth, Katies mother, how she found her daughters distorted corpse with a look of pure horror on her face and asks Rachel to investigate the strange circumstances in which Katie died. Rachel discovers that the people who saw the video with Katie died on the same night and same time as her. She also finds out that the only witness to Katies death, Becca, is now in a psychiatric hospital. Rachel then goes up to Katies room, where she discovers a scrapbook of Katies with cropped out pictures of people with their faces scratched out. She takes a photography pick up slip and goes home.

The following morning, Rachel goes to pick up the photographs and discovers the faces of all those who died were distorted in the most recent pictures. Her investigation leads her to the cabin where Katie and the others watched the tape. Rachel finds and watches the tape, which is filled with random disturbing images including footage of a well. The phone rings, and she hears a childs voice say "seven days." The next day, Rachel calls Noah (Martin Henderson), her ex-boyfriend, to show him the video and asks for his assistance. He asks her to make a copy and she does.

After viewing the tape, Rachel begins experiencing nightmares, nosebleeds, and surreal situations. She watches the video again, clip by clip, and a fly from inside the tape manages to leave the television screen. Rachel visits Becca in the mental hospital and when Rachel asks her what happened, Becca answers "She will show you" and reminds Rachel that she has four days left. Rachel investigates the tape more and finds out about a horse ranch owned by Anna Morgan and her husband Richard and their sickly and peculiar adoptive daughter Samara. The horses at the Morgan ranch suddenly became disturbed and ultimately went mad and drowned themselves, which supposedly caused Anna, a horse-lover, to become depressed and commit suicide. Rachel is later horrified to discover that her son has watched the tape. When the tape finishes, an arm reaches out of the well. Panicked, Rachel calls Noah, revealing that Noah is Aidans father.

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 and adopted a child named Samara (Daveigh Chase). Dr. Grasnik (Jane Alexander) recounts that Anna soon complained about gruesome visions that only happened when Samara was around, so both were sent away to a mental institution. Noah goes to the mental institution and finds Annas file. He discovers that there was a video of Samara, but the video is missing. Rachel sneaks back to the Morgan house where she discovers a box containing the missing video. She watches it and is confronted by Richard, who claims that she and her son will die, and that there is nothing they can do. He commits suicide in front of Rachel by using an electric cable in a bathtub.

Rachel and Noah go to the barn and discover the high attic, where Samara was kept by her father. There is an image of a tree near the cabin burnt into the wall. They return to the cabin and discover that it was built on top of the well. Rachel accidentally falls in and finds Samaras skeleton, as it rises up from the bottom to the surface of the well water. She has a sudden vision, which reveals Anna suffocated Samara with a plastic bag and pushed her into the well. However, Samara did not die from the suffocation and survived in the well for seven days. Noah informs Rachel that the time she shouldve been killed has passed, causing Rachel to believe that setting Samara free from the well broke the curse.

When Rachel informs Aidan that they will no longer be troubled by Samara, he is horrified and tells his mother that Samara "never sleeps" and they were not supposed to help Samara, just as his nose begins bleeding. Rachel realizes Noah will be the next to die and drives to his apartment. While she does, Noahs television switches on and a soggy and decaying Samara with long black hair covering her face crawls out of the screen. Noah soon dies of fright as he and Samara make eye contact. Rachel discovers his body with a terrified and discolored face similar to Katies. Rachel returns home and burns the original tape. She recalls the footage of Samara in the mental hospital and realizes that Samara was truly evil. Rachel wonders why she did not die like the others, and remembers that she made a copy of the tape. She realizes the only way to escape the curse and save Aidan is to have him copy the tape and show it to someone else, thereby continuing the cycle of death as Samara has intended.

Cast

Soundtrack

The film features an original score composed by Hans Zimmer. The music is atmospheric and features many cropped endings. The soundtrack release did not coincide with the films theatrical run. It was released in 2005, accompanying The Ring Two in an album that combined music from both The Ring and The Ring Two.

All music composed by Hans Zimmer, Henning Lohner, and Martin Tillman.

Marketing

In order to advertise The Ring, many promotional Web sites were formed featuring the characters and places in the film. The video from the cursed videotape was even played in late night programming over the summer of 2002 without any reference to the movie.

Box Office

The film was financially successful, and the box office gross increased from its first weekend to its second. The initial success led DreamWorks to increase the film into 700 additional theaters. The Ring made $8.3 million in its first two weeks in Japan, compared to Rings $6.6 million total box-office gross. 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 Ring.

Critical Reception

The Ring was met with generally positive reviews from film critics, receiving 72% favorable reviews out of 201 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes. The sites consensus reads: "With little gore and a lot of creepy visuals, The Ring gets under your skin, thanks to director Gore Verbinskis haunting sense of atmosphere and an impassioned performance from Naomi Watts." Metacritic gave the film a score of 57/100 (mixed or average) from 36 reviews. On Ebert & Roeper, Richard Roeper gave the film "Thumbs Up" and said it was very gripping and scary despite some minor unanswered questions. Roger Ebert gave the film "Thumbs Down" and felt it was boring and "borderline ridiculous"; he also disliked the extended, detailed ending. IGNs Jeremy Conrad praised the movie for its atmospheric set up and cinematography, and said that "there are disturbing images… but the film doesnt 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" (referencing a scene from Thirteen Ghosts). Film Threats Jim Agnew called it "dark, disturbing and original throughout. You know that youre going to see something a little different than your usual studio crap." Verbinski was praised 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 Verbinskis direction, critics railed the characters as being weak. The Chicago Readers Jonathan Rosenbaum said that the film was "an utter waste of Watts… perhaps because the script didnt bother to give her a character," whereas other critics such as William Arnold from Seattle Post-Intelligencer said the opposite: "she projects intelligence, determination and resourcefulness that carry the movie nicely." Many critics regarded Dorfmans character as a "creepy-child" "Sixth Sense cliche." 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 doesnt make much sense."

The movie was number 20 on the cable channel Bravos list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments. Bloody Disgusting ranked the film sixth in their list of the Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade, with the article saying "The Ring was not only the first American "J-Horror" remake out of the gate; it also still stands as the best."

Sequel

A sequel titled The Ring Two was released on March 18, 2005. Another sequel titled Rings will be released in November 2015.