THE RING (2002 FILM)

'''The Ring''' is a 2002 American remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film, ''Ring'' (also known as ''Ringu''). Both movies are based on the novel, Ring by Koji Suzuki. It was directed by Gore Verbinski and starred Naomi Watts and Martin Henderson. This movie was number 20 on the cable channel Bravo's list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

Contents

Plot

Critical Reception

Trivia

References in popular culture

References

See also

External links

Plot

The story begins with two teenage girls discussing the events of the previous weekend, during which one of them, Katie Embry (played by Amber Tamblyn), went to a cabin in the mountains to spend time with some friends. While talking, the subject of a supposedly cursed videotape is brought up. The other girl, Rebecca 'Becca' Kotler (played by Rachael Bella), states that anyone who watches this video receives a phone call, in which a voice says, "you will die in seven days." Then, exactly seven days (to the minute) after viewing the tape, the viewer dies. Katie reveals in horror that she had watched that video at the cabin last weekend with three friends, exactly seven days earlier. After a series of unexplainable occurrences, involving televisions in the house turning themselves on and eerie sounds, Katie is mysteriously killed while Becca had the misfortune of watching. It is unknown what killed Katie but it was enough to get Becca sent to a mental hospital.
The film then introduces Katie's aunt, Rachel (played by Naomi Watts), a journalist living in Seattle. Her son, Aidan, was not only Katie's cousin but also a good friend, and seems to be sensitive to psychic occurrences. At Katie's funeral Rachel's sister asks her to investigate her daughters death, she begins it and learns of the videotape. Her investigation leads her to the same cabin in the mountains where Katie and her friends had watched the tape. There, she finds the tape and eventually watches it. After that the phone rings and a girl says - seven days. The next day she calls Noah, Aiden's father, to see the video. He asks her to make a copy for further investigation. Unfortunately, Aidan watches the tape a couple days later.
Rachel's investigation turns to the tape itself, which contains a seemingly random series of disturbing, grainy black and white images. Investigating those images leads Rachel to Moesko island where Anna Morgan (the woman seen in the tape) lived with her husband and daughter, and raised horses until they all died and she went to a mental institute, and commited suicide later. She goes to the Morgan's house and finds Richard Morgan who refuses to talk about the video and his daughter. Rachel goes to see the local doctor to ask about the Morgan family. She tells her that Anna wanted a child more than anything, but couldn't have it. One winter they left and returned with Samara who they adopted. But after some time Anna started complaining about visions that only happend when Samara was around so she sended them both to a mental institute on the continent. Noah goes to the institute and finds Anna Morgans file and discovers that a video is missing. Rachel goes back to the Morgan's house and after watching the video of Samara's conversation with the doctor. Richard saw it and after that commited suicide.
Noah arrived at the house right after that and they go to the shed to discover a little room where her father kept Samara. Behind the wallpaper's they discover a burned image of a tree which was in the video, but Rachel remembered seeing it near the cabin where she watched the video. They arrive there and discover a well under it. Rachel is led to where Samara was killed; at the bottom of a well. Rachel gets stuck in the well, and, finds Samara's body. Samara shows her how her mother took her to the well and dropped her there. Rachel notifies the authorities, and Samara is given a proper burial, presumably putting her spirit to rest. Noah asks her how long could you survive there and Rachel says that you could survive seven days.
At this point it seems that everything is well again, and Rachel informs Aidan that they will no longer be troubled by Samara. However, Aidan quickly corrects her and says that Samara's spirit has been released, evident by the bruises on his arm, given by Samara in a nightmare (This also happened to Rachel). In the film's most unsettling and memorable scene, Noah is going over some film prints in his apartment when his TV turns on to static, in the same fashion that Rachel's niece Katie experienced before her death. Noah turns it off casually before the TV turns itself on again, which alerts Noah. He is then treated to a recurring image of a well, in which a long-haired female figure (Samara) crawls out of the well and slowly walks toward the screen. It intensifies as Noah quickly backs away and Samara literally crawls out of the television set. Noah knocks over a shelf in fear and crawls away before turning around, only to have Samara stare directly at him, causing his inevitable death which Rachel discovers after racing to his apartment. Rachel is scared and worried that Aidan would die too when she realizes that the only way to escape Samara after watching the video is to make a copy of the tape and show it to someone else, thus continuing the cycle. The ending of the movie is when Rachel is helping Aidan copy the tape.

Critical Reception

The Ring received mixed reviews from film critics, receiving a “fresh” 72% favorable reviews out of 166 reviews on Rotten Tomatoes,^[1] and a Metacritic score of 57/100 (mixed or average) from 36 reviews.^[2] 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.”^[3] 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.”^[4] 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.”^[5]
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,” ^[4] 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.”^[7] Many critics regarded David Dorfman’s character as a creepy-child “Six Sense cliché.”^[5] A large sum of critics, like Miami Herald’s Rene Rodriguez and USA Today’s Claudia Puig^[9] found themselves confused and thought that by the end of the movie “[the plot] still doesn't make much sense.”^[10]

Trivia

★ 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.

★ Before Naomi Watts was cast in the leading role, other actresses were considered for the part including Liv Tyler, Nicole Kidman, Jennifer Connelly, and Gwenyth Paltrow. Kate Beckinsale almost got the part but was turned down because the director felt she looked too young.

★ There was a subplot that was dropped from the film, having been written and shot that featured Chris Cooper as a child murderer. Cooper's villainous character appears in the beginning of the film, who tries to convince journalist Rachel (Watts) that he has been rehabilitated and ready to reenter society. But Rachel sees through this facade and helps put him back in jail. At the end of the film, Rachel drops off a copy of the videotape for him at the mental hospital where he is staying. The only remainder of this subplot is a picture of Cooper in a newspaper article, which Noah picks up his coffee mug from.

★ There are brief flashes of the "ring" motif throughout the film. There is at least one instance of a barely detectable single frame of the ring being spliced into the film between scenes, such as at 57:35, just after the horse jumps off the ferry. The ring also appears briefly during the opening DreamWorks logo, as well as just above the fading light of the lighthouse when Rachel returns to the Morgan house at night.

★ At one point in the film, in the scene where Rachel is researching Anna Morgan and Moesko Island, she finds information on a website which is located at: http://www.moeskoislandlighthouse.com. This one-page website actually existed until it was discontinued in 2004. The website has since been copied and placed at: http://www.sweb.cz/moesko/

★ The "Don't Watch This" feature on the DVD has outtakes from the film that are edited into a short film. It also appears on the VHS version after the film's end credits. We discover from the scenes that the camp ground owner near the well also saw the tape. Noah discovers his body in a canoe on the lake near the camp when he and Rachel returned there on day 7. The camp owner presumably watched the film shortly before Rachel. The deleted scenes also show Rachel renting two movies, '' and ''Chitty Chitty Bang Bang'', which she presumably did to return her and her son's copy of the tape.

★ As an exclusive DVD feature; if you move the cursor one up from the "Play Movie" option and press the select button on your remote, the uncut version of the tape is played. After this track plays, the DVD returns to a faux main menu which is identical to the real main menu, except a ringing phone is heard. If the viewer has a home theatre system, the ring is sounded through the rear speakers, increasing the illusion that their phone is actually ringing.

★ When the movie was released on VHS in North America, the video was packaged in a transparent plastic sleeve rather than a standard cardboard one. This gives the video the appearance of a rental tape one would find at a local store. The DVD came in a standard black keep case.

★ Just before the release of the sequel, ''The Ring'' was re-released with an extra disc that had a fifteen minute short film, ''Rings'', which was intended to bridge ''The Ring'' and ''The Ring Two''. ''Rings'' is also included as a special feature in the DVD release of ''The Ring Two''.

★ Aiden took their name from the child in the movie^[11], and sampled a quote from the movie in their song "I Set My Friends On Fire".

★ During the cursed video, approximately 25 seconds in, a young boy's voice can be heard faintly singing about a weeping willow. This audiotrack is sampled from the 1961 classic The Innocents.

★ A crossbuster logo is briefly visible inside a locker. This is a reference to Gregor Verbinski's previous experience directing videos for punk band Bad Religion.

★ This is one of a few films to be rated PG-13 in the USA but to then get an MA15+ rating (equivalent to the US R rating) in Australia.

★ The Ring is listed as #20 on ''Bravo's 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.
;' 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 guard's 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.
;'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 ending to the Video of the Gorillaz single ''Dare'' included Noodle, a Japanese character, suddenly stopping as the Camera homed in on her eye, moving to another scene. She would later confess that this part had been directly inspired by The ''Ring'' Franchise 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.
;'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.

References

1. The Ring
2. The Ring
3. The Ring
4. The Ring
5. The Ring
6. The Ring
7. The Ring
8. The Ring
9. 'Ring' has hang-up or two
10. No gore, yet scares aplenty in `Ring'
11. http://www.abqtrib.com/news/2006/jun/01/aidens-lyrics-might-be-dark-but-the-bands-future

See also

★ The Ring Two

★ List of Characters in The Ring

★ List of films about television

External links

★ ring-themovie.com - Official website

★ Interesting fansite - note this links to a similar thing to the ring

★ 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.

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★ Trailer from Tribute.ca