The Ring is a 2002 American supernatural psychological horror film directed by Gore Verbinski and starring Naomi Watts. It is a remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film Ring, which was based on the novel Ring by Koji Suzuki about a man who discovers a videotape that turns out to be cursed.
The Ring was released in theaters on October 18, 2002, and received mostly positive reviews. Many critics praised the reliance on dread and visuals over gore, and the direction along with the screenplay writing, but criticized the character development. The film also grossed over $249 million on a $48 million production budget making it one of the highest grossing horror films of all time. The film was followed by two sequels, The Ring Two (2005) and Rings (2017).
The Ring is notable for being the first American remake of a Japanese horror classic and for paving the way for a number of subsequent J-Horror remakes such as The Grudge, Dark Water, Pulse, and One Missed Call.
Plot
Two high school students, Katie Embry and Becca Kotler, have a sleepover and discuss the urban legend of a cursed videotape that will kill anyone seven days after watching it. Katie reveals that she and three friends watched said videotape, but Becca does not believe her. At 10 PM, Katie goes downstairs where she witnesses several supernatural occurrences, such as the TV turning on by itself, occur. Frightened, she runs upstairs and calls Becca for help but there is no response. Katie enters her bedroom and sees an image of a well on her TV screen as an unseen force rushes towards her and kills her.
At Katie’s funeral, her aunt Rachel Keller, a journalist from Seattle, is asked by her sister Ruth to investigate the bizarre circumstances behind Katie's death after discovering her gruesomely distorted corpse in the closet. Rachel’s son Aidan possesses an extrasensory ability, claiming Katie told him she would die a week ago. Rachel also discovers Katie’s three friends all died at 10 PM on the same night Katie died and that Becca has been institutionalised after witnessing her death. Looking through Katie's photos, Rachel finds out that they have all stayed at Cabin 12 in Shelter Mountain Inn a week before their deaths. In Cabin 12, she discovers and watches the cursed videotape which contains surreal and disturbing images. As soon as the tape ends, the cabin’s telephone rings and Rachel hears a childish voice utter "7 days".
Rachel enlists help from Noah Clay, her ex-boyfriend and Aidan’s father. A video analyst, Noah is initially skeptical of the tape’s curse but watches it, asking Rachel to copy it for examination. Rachel studies the video, discovering hidden imagery of a lighthouse. She identifies it as the lighthouse of Moesko Island, connecting it to a woman on the video, a horse breeder named Anna Morgan. Anna’s ranch was caught in controversy when her prize-winning horses committed mass suicide by leaping into the sea, which ended after Anna committed suicide by jumping off a cliff. Rachel and Noah both experience supernatural symptoms as a result of the tape's curse throughout the week. At home, Rachel discovers Aidan watching the cursed videotape much to her dismay. She leaves Aidan in Ruth’s care, while she goes to Moesko Island, and Noah travels to Eola Psychiatric Hospital to gain information on Anna’s medical files.
Rachel discovers Anna had an adopted daughter, Samara Morgan, the girl who is implied to be the one behind the cursed videotape. On the ferry to the island, a horse is spooked by Rachel's cursed presence and commits suicide in a similar fashion to Anna's horses. The horse leaps off the ferry and the passengers later discover that the horse had been mangled by the propellors. Rachel meets Anna’s widow Richard, but he becomes angry when she starts asking him about Samara. She then speaks to the island’s GP, Dr. Grasnik, who explains that Samara possessed uncontrolled thoughtography, which allowed to burn gruesome images into her parents' minds, with Anna being the most affected leading both her and Samara to be institutionalised. Rachel confronts Richard over his supposed abuse over Samara but he reveals to her that he had been a victim of Samara's mental torment and electrocutes himself in the bathtub to end it for good. Noah arrives, and the two search the ranch’s barn where Samara was kept, secluded from her mother. It is implied that the horses kept Samara awake, which caused her to snap and drive them to commit suicide. They find a burnt drawing of a tree on the wall, the same tree seen in the videotape, and on Shelter Mountain.
Travelling to Shelter Mountain, Rachel and Noah discover a well hidden beneath the rental cabin where they suspect Samara’s body is, assuming Richard murdered her. Rachel falls down the well and experiences a flashback of Anna being the one responsible for throwing Samara into the well, where she survived for 7 days. Rachel recovers Samara's corpse and gives her a proper burial in an attempt to appease her spirit. She also discovers that she is still alive on the time and date that she was supposed to be killed, making Rachel and Noah believe that the curse is now broken. The next day, Aidan informs Rachel she shouldn’t have helped Samara as "she never sleeps", revealing that the curse is still active.
Rachel drives to Noah's apartment after realising that he is next to die. Meanwhile, Noah witnesses a TV turn on by itself, where an image of a well is displayed. A decayed Samara crawls out of the well and exits the TV screen, where she reveals her waterlogged face, killing Noah via fear. Rachel then discovers that she is too late to save him after discovering Noah's corpse in a similar fashion to Katie's. The enraged Rachel drives home and destroys the original tape but soon realises she was spared because she copied it and showed it to Noah, replicating the curse. In the closing scene, Rachel helps Aidan make his own copy of the tape, and he asks what happens to the person they show the tape to. Rachel doesn't respond as the film ends with static.
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