The Ring was released theatrically by DreamWorks Pictures on October 18, 2002. It received mixed-to-positive reviews, with critics in particular praising the atmosphere and visuals, Bojan Bazelli's cinematography, Verbinski's direction and Watts' performance. It was also a box-office success, grossing $249.3 million on a production budget of $48 million, making it one of the highest-grossing horror remakes of all time.
The Ring was followed by The Ring Two (2005) and Rings (2017). The success of The Ring inspired American remakes of several other Asian and Japanese horror films, including The Grudge (2004) and Dark Water (2005).
Plot
Teenage girls Katie and Becca discuss an urban legend about a cursed videotape that causes whoever watches it to die in seven days. That night, Katie, who watched it a week ago, is killed by an unseen force.
At Katie's funeral, her mother asks her sister Rachel, a Seattle-based journalist, to investigate her daughter's death. Rachel discovers that Katie's friends all died in bizarre accidents at the exact same time and night of Katie's death. Rachel goes to the Shelter Mountain Inn, where Katie and her friends watched the tape. She finds and watches the tape; it contains strange and frightening imagery. She then receives a phone call from an unknown caller who whispers, "seven days". Though initially skeptical, Rachel quickly begins to experience supernatural occurrences linked with the tape.
Rachel recruits the help of her video analyst ex-boyfriend Noah. He watches the tape and Rachel makes him a copy. She identifies a woman on the tape: horse breeder Anna Morgan, who killed herself after some of her horses drowned themselves off Moesko Island. Rachel and Noah's young son Aidan ends up watching the tape. Aidan also possesses some supernatural abilities, which he uses to help with Rachel's investigation.
Rachel heads for Moesko Island to speak to Anna's widower Richard, while Noah travels to Eola Psychiatric Hospital to view Anna's medical files. Rachel discovers that Anna had adopted a girl, Samara, who possessed the ability to psychically etch images onto objects and into people's minds, tormenting her parents and their horses. Noah finds a psychiatric file on Samara that mentions a missing video record last seen by Richard.
Returning to the Morgan home, Rachel finds a birth certificate proving that Samara is the biological child of Richard and Anna. She also finds the missing video, in which Samara explains her powers during a therapy session. Richard insists that Samara is evil and commits suicide by electrocuting himself. Noah and Rachel find a loft in the barn, which the Morgans used to isolate Samara from themselves and the outside world. There is an image of a tree behind the wallpaper; Rachel recognizes it as a tree at the Shelter Mountain Inn.
They return to Shelter Mountain Inn, where they are led to a well beneath the floorboards. Rachel falls inside and experiences a vision of Anna dumping Samara into the well, where she survived for seven days. Samara's body surfaces from the water. After Rachel is rescued, they arrange a proper burial for Samara.
Back home, Aidan warns Rachel that it was a mistake to help Samara. Rachel realizes that Noah's seven days are up; Samara's ghost crawls out of his TV screen and kills him. Unable to deduce why she was spared, Rachel realizes that the tape seen by Aidan was a copy she had created. Rachel saves Aidan by having him make another copy to show someone else. Aidan asks what will happen to the person who watches the copy, to which Rachel does not answer.
Maury Ginsberg as a video store clerk (DVD deleted scenes) (uncredited)
Production
Development and casting
The Ring went into production without a completed script.[5]Ehren Kruger wrote three drafts of the screenplay before Scott Frank came on to do an uncredited re-write. Gore Verbinski was initially inspired to do a remake of Ring after Walter F. Parkes sent him a VHS copy of the Japanese film, which he described as "intriguing", "pulp" and "avant-garde".
The original WGA-approved credits listed Hiroshi Takahashi (writer of the original 1998 screenplay for Ring) but his name is absent from the final print.
Several high-profile actresses were offered the lead role, including Gwyneth Paltrow, Jennifer Connelly and Kate Beckinsale.[6] Verbinski admitted to not wanting to cast "big stars" as he wanted his film to be "discovered" and describes the wave of harsh criticism from hardcore fans of the original Japanese film as "inevitable", although he expressed desire for them to find the remake equally compelling. He also sought to retain the minimalism prevalent throughout Ring and set it in Seattle, due to its "wet and isolated" atmosphere.[5]
Chris Cooper played a murderer in two scenes meant to bookend the film, but was ultimately cut.[4]
Title
As with the original Japanese film Ring, the title of The Ring can be interpreted as referring to the telephone call which warns those who watched the cursed tape that they will die in seven days,[9] as well as to the view of the ring of light seen from the bottom of the well where Samara was left to die.[10]
Cinematography
The film's cinematography, director of which was Bojan Bazelli, is marked for its soft lighting and grey blue-green colour. Shot on film, the production is notable for achieving its colour correction in-camera using 81EF and one of two green filters[a],[11] thereby committing to the film's visual style early, not relying on digital grading in the edit. The soft lighting was achieved by "diffusing the fill sources enough to match [the natural lighting]"[11] through the use of up to three layers of shades, HMIs and CTB[b], and set up to create as little shadow as possible to "subconsciously alter the viewer's sense of perception and add a heightened sense of ambiguity."[13]
Score
The film features an original score composed by Hans Zimmer (who would later collaborate on Verbinski's other works). The soundtrack release did not coincide with the film's original 2002 theatrical run. It was released in 2005, accompanying The Ring's 2005 sequel in an album that combined music from both the first and second film. The soundtrack contains a few themes associated with the characters, moods and locations, including multiple uses of the Dies irae theme. The score makes use of string instruments, pianos and synthesizers.[14]
The Ring / The Ring Two (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)
To advertise The Ring, many promotional websites were formed featuring characters and places in the film. The video from the cursed videotape was played in late-night programming over the summer of 2002 without any reference to the film. Physical VHS copies were also randomly distributed outside of movie theaters by placing the tapes on the windshields of people's cars.[4][15]
Box office
The Ring opened theatrically on October 18, 2002 in the United States, on 1,981 screens, and grossed $15,015,393 during its opening weekend.[16][3] The film went on to become a sleeper hit,[17] leading DreamWorks to expand its release to 700 additional theaters.[3] It ultimately grossed $129,128,133 in the United States.[3] In Japan, the film earned $8.3 million in the first two weeks of its release.[18] Worldwide, The Ring grossed a total of $249,348,933.[3]
Critical response
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 209 reviews, with an average rating of 6.60/10. The site's critics consensus reads: "With little gore and a lot of creepy visuals, The Ring gets under your skin, thanks to director Gore Verbinski's haunting sense of atmosphere and an impassioned performance from Naomi Watts".[19]Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".[20] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave The Ring an average grade of "B−" on an A+ to F scale.[21]
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.[22] Jeremy Conrad from IGN praised The Ring 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".[23]Film Threat's Jim Agnew called it dark, disturbing and original.[24]
Despite the praise given to the direction, some criticized the lack of character development. Jonathan Rosenaum from the Chicago Reader said that the film was "an utter waste of Watts ... perhaps because the script didn't bother to give her a character",[25] whereas William Arnold from the Seattle Post-Intelligencer disagreed, claiming that she projects intelligence, determination and resourcefulness in the film.[26] Several critics, like Miami Herald's Rene Rodriguez and USA Today's Claudia Puig,[27] found themselves confused and thought "for all the time [the film] spends explaining, it still doesn't make much sense".[28]
The success of The Ring paved the way for American remakes of several other Asian and Japanese horror films, including The Grudge (2004), Dark Water (2005), Shutter and The Eye (both 2008).[32][33]
The Ring ranked number 20 on the cable channelBravo's list of The 100 Scariest Movie Moments. Bloody Disgusting ranked it sixth in their list of the "Top 20 Horror Films of the Decade", with the article saying that "The Ring was not only the first American 'J-horror' remake out of the gate; it also still stands as the best".[34]
Sequels
A sequel, titled The Ring Two, was released on March 18, 2005. A short film, titled Rings, was also released in 2005, and is set between The Ring and The Ring Two. A third installment, also titled Rings, was released on February 3, 2017.
^The source writes '85EFs' here, which do not exit; a likely typo. The green filters are specified as +14 and +7 points of green printer lights
^"C.T.B. stands for Color Temperature Blue. This is an abbreviation for the color correction gels used in lighting to convert the color temperature from tungsten to daylight. They come in gradients: Quarter Blue, Half Blue, Full Blue."[12]
^Sherman, Dale (2013). Armageddon Films FAQ: All That's Left to Know About Zombies, Contagions, Aliens and the End of the World as We Know It!. Applause Books. ISBN978-1617131196. The story goes that seven days after viewing the tape, those who watch will receive a phone call (hence the first interpretation of 'the ring') [...]
^Silverblatt, Art; Zlobin, Nikolai (2004). International Communications: A Media Literacy Approach. Routledge. ISBN978-0765609748.
^ abHolben, Jay (November 2002). "Death Watch". American Cinematographer Vol. 83 No. 11 P. 50-59. Archived from the original on February 13, 2024. Retrieved February 12, 2024.((cite web)): CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)(subscription required)
^"Archived copy". Archived from the original on February 12, 2024. Retrieved February 12, 2024.((cite web)): CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^"Ring, The: Production Notes". www.cinema.com. Archived from the original on February 12, 2024. Retrieved February 12, 2024. Bazelli expounds, "In lighting the sets and the actors, we tried to eliminate all the shadows cast by the actors, which is meant to subconsciously alter the viewer's sense of perception and add a heightened sense of ambiguity."
