The Ring

The Ring is a 2002 American remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film of the same name (also known as Ringu). Both films are based on the novel of the same name by Kôji Suzuki. Directed by Gore Verbinski and starring Naomi Watts and Martin Henderson, The Ring was a financial success.

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 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 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, 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 discusses the death of her daughter with Rachel and says, "I saw her face", then an extremely disturbing image of the girl in a closet is flashed for a few seconds. Rachel's sister also asks her to investigate her daughter's death. Her investigation leads her to the cabin where Katie watched the tape. She finds and watches the tape; the phone rings, and she hears a child's voice say "Seven days." The next day she calls Noah, her ex-boyfriend and the father of her precocious son Aidan, to see the video. He asks her to make a copy for further investigation. Aidan watches the tape a few 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 is able to pluck it from the monitor). Rachel investigates the images of a woman seen in the tape, leading her to Anna Morgan, 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 and kill themselves, supposedly 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 (Daveigh Chase). Anna soon complained of visions that only happened when Samara was around, so both were sent to a mental institution. Noah goes to the institution, 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 says that the girl was evil. He then electrocutes himself in the bathtub, sending Rachel running out of the room screaming.

Noah arrives and, with Rachel, goes to the barn to discover an attic where Samara was kept by her father. Behind the wallpaper they discover an image of a tree seen on the tape, which grows near the Shelter Mountain Inn. At the inn, they discover a well underneath the floor, in which Rachel finds Samara's body, 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, frightening him to death – which Rachel discovers after racing to his apartment. Upon returning to her apartment, Rachel destroys and burns the original tape screaming and asking what Samara wants from her. She soon notices the tape marked "COPY" underneath the couch. Afraid 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 ends with Rachel helping Aidan to copy the tape and put it in a public library.

In order to advertise The Ring, many promotional websites were formed featuring the characters and places in the film. The film was financially successful; the box office gross actually increased from its 1st weekend to its 2nd, as the initial success led DreamWorks to roll the film into 700 additional theatres. The Ring made $8.3 million in its first two weeks in Japan, compared to Ringu's $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.^[3] A sequel, The Ring Two, was released in North American theaters on March 18, 2005. It was directed by Hideo Nakata, the director of Ringu.

The Ring received fairly positive reviews from film critics, receiving a “fresh” 72 percent 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 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. 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.” 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 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 intelligence, determination and resourcefulness that carry the movie nicely.” Many critics regarded 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 cabl

e channel Bravo's list of the 100 Scariest Movie Moments.

Rachel Keller

Rachel Keller is a journalist living in Seattle with her son Aidan. After her niece's strange death after watching a rumored cursed videotape that supposedly kills you seven days after watching it. Rachel's curiosity led her to a cabin in which her niece and three of her friends watched the tape. After finding it, Rachel foolishly watches it which leads her to receive a phonecall in which a whispery voice says "seven days". After both her ex-boyfriend and her son watch it she investigates Moesko Island in which the tape apparently came from. Rachel then learns of the girl Samara Morgan who was put up for adoption and was then murdered by her adoptive mother, Anna after Samara somehow burned images from her mind into her mind. Rachel finds Samara's corpse lying at the bottom of a well buried beneath the cabin which the tape was first found. Rachel organises a proper burial for Samara, supposedly putting her spirit to rest. She thinks that everything is fine as she is now on her "eighth day" until her ex-boyfriend, Noah is killed by Samara. Rachel learns that she survived because she made a copy of the tape and showed it to someone else; Aidan.

Aidan Keller

Aidan is the son of Rachel Keller and Noah Clay. He is sensitive to psychic things. During both films, Samara burns images from her mind into Aidan due to his condition. Aidan is often quiet and very strange, calling his mother by her actual name. He is like Samara Morgan in many ways. In the Ring 2, we see a different side to Aidan where he and Samara become one, as he is possessed by Samara's evil spirit.

Noah Clay

Noah is Rachel Keller's ex-boyfriend and the father to Aidan. His occupation is photography and working with cameras, which is why he is good at inspecting the cursed videotape and learning where it came from. Noah is killed by Samara Morgan in the first film due to Rachel copying the tape and showing it him.

Samara Morgan

Samara Morgan is the main antagonist in the films. She is the Americanized version of Sadako Yamamura. Samara is a seemingly unstoppable curse/spirit that will not give up on her "victims" and people that have watched the mysterious tape. What Samara exactly does to her victims is still unknown but looking at facial expressions of her victims can give an idea of the horror within.

Anna Morgan

Anna Morgan was the adoptive mother of Samara Morgan.

Richard Morgan

Richard Morgan was the adoptive father of Samara Morgan.

Katie Embry

Katie was the niece of Rachel Keller, as well as being cousins and close friends with Aiden. When Katie, her boyfriend and two of his friends went to stay in a cabin they recorded a football match onto a videotape. However, when they watched the tape they viewed a series of grainy black and white images which ended with a phone call with a mysterious voice saying "seven days". Exactly seven days later Katie died in her home and her best friend Becca went insane. It's also noted during a scene in which Rachel is speaking with people at Katie's funeral that her boyfriend also passed away, at the exact same time.

Rebecca 'Becca' Kotler

Rebecca 'Becca' Kotler was a friend of Katie Embry. On the night of Katie's last day, Becca supposedly witnessed Katie's mysterious death. After that, Becca went insane and was taken to a special institution.