Upon its release on October 18th, 2002, The Ring proved to be a hit for everyone concerned. Horror movies were in a weird place in the early 2000s, particularly after 9/11. It was a decade of Japanese horror imports and remakes, supernatural stories, slick Hollywood efforts, torture porn, and in general the genre dramatically expanding on what it could offer audiences. The Ring represented the trend of horror movies that went relatively big on spectacle and budget, and then emphasized our powerlessness when faced with the inherent chaos of our world.
The real world was dangerous enough but knowing this didn’t seem to dampen our taste for the idea that there was also a whole unknowable world to contend with. At its heart a ghost story with a heavy lean into technology, The Ring put its characters in a seemingly hopeless situation. You watch a videotape, seven days go by. Someone later finds you with your face distorted into a frozen mask of terror, suggesting your soul was just ripped out through your nostrils. This is the nightmare faced by a newspaper reporter (Naomi Watts), her young son (David Dorfman), and eventually her estranged husband (Martin Henderson).
The source behind this cursed videotape, presented in the long-standing tradition of urban legends, is what drives the mystery behind this ghost story. The Ring starts with a supernatural force that continues to create a body count without so much as a full understanding by its victims of what’s happening.
The ghost of a young girl named Samara is driven by something, and it falls to a fractured family to figure everything out. The Ring draws from the main threads and ideas of the 1998 original, even maintaining its predecessor’s minimalism in joining together the supernatural with the compelling mystery. Yet it goes about these things with its own distinct, westernized flair.
The Ring may feel too clean and commercialized for some hardcore horror fans, but it remains then as now an impressive example of a horror movie being successful with a lot of different people. Many serious horror fans appreciate or at least admire what The Ring achieves. A lot of folks who don’t watch a lot of horror enjoyed it, too. Beyond the movie’s qualities as a piece of clever and memorable entertainment, the audience reach it achieved is perhaps the biggest reason why The Ring continues to be quite popular.
20 years later, The Ring is still regarded as one of the high marks of its decade. Naomi Watts continues to headline both TV and film projects, even appearing recently in another American remake of a foreign horror movie. In fact, virtually everyone in the credited cast is still working. Screenwriter Ehren Kruger, responsible for adapting a Japanese horror hit into something that would also appeal to English-speaking audiences, is still a successful screenwriter in Hollywood. Only David Dorfman, who played the young boy Aidan, is working in (and seemingly doing quite well) a different field.
And then we have director Gore Verbinski, whose resume runs across an interesting collection of mainstream films. Unfortunately, he hasn’t directed anything since the 2016 financial bomb A Cure for Wellness. He’ll hopefully change that before long, as stuff like The Ring proves he can helm large-scale entertainment products that also feel as though they have a heart beneath the special effects and star power.
The Ring may not scare you specifically, but it can still pack a punch for the right person 20 years after its release. For almost anyone else, it remains a fun example of what a remake can do, with attention paid to characters and atmosphere on a level strong enough to help kickstart an appreciation for Japanese horror.
READ NEXT: 10 Years Later, Is Sinister One of the Scariest Movies Ever Made?
Some of the coverage you find on Cultured Vultures contains affiliate links, which provide us with small commissions based on purchases made from visiting our site. We cover gaming news, movie reviews, wrestling and much more.
