#6: The Ring (2002)

"Seven days . . . "

Journalist and single mother Rachel Embry (Naomi Watts), while investigating the mysterious deaths of several teenagers (including her own niece), discovers that all of them seem to have watched a "cursed" videotape exactly seven days before they died. Dismissing this as mere urban legend, Rachel travels to the remote cabin where niece recently vacationed, locates the tape and watches it. As soon as the tape ends she receives a phone call in which a young girl's voice whispers "seven days." Convinced that she now has only seven days to live, Rachel begins desperately decoding the surreal images seen in the tape . . . but will she be able to unravel the mystery in time?

The Ring totally took me off guard. At the time at which it came out, I hadn't been honestly scared by a horror film for so long that I had begun to suspect that there wasn't anything I could see on film that would frighten me . . . and boy, was I wrong. Besides the fact that I almost had my arm torn out of its socket by my friend Carmen, whose apparent reaction to terror is to tug as hard as she can on the person sitting next to her, I went home literally afraid to look at my television- something which proved rather inconvenient as my bed had recently broken and I was forced to sleep on the couch in front of it.

This film, the first prominent remake of a Japanese horror film (1998's Ringu), gave the horror genre much-needed shot in the arm by introducing common Eastern horror tropes into a western environment, as well as transforming modern objects like televisions and videotapes into sources of terror. Its tone is incredibly nihilistic, especially when it comes to the pitiless nature of its antagonist, Samara (the intensely creepy Daveigh Chase), an incredibly pissed off spirit who wasn't exactly a sweet-heart when she was alive . . . but also notable is the overwhelming sense of dread that seems to saturate (in many cases, literally) everything in tones of gloom. And let's not forget the terrible way that Samara's victims die . . . shudder. Only in a movie this grim could a character like Rachel's creepy psychic son Aiden (David Dorfman) manage to come off as merely an eccentric side note.

This film's success at the box office did have a downside- namely, the rush to remake just about every Japanese horror film that has come out in the last ten years. In just about every case, I prefer the originals, but The Ring is a huge exception. I actually do think that the American remake of Ringu is superior to its Japanese counterpart, both in production values, the quality of the script, and the actors themselves. You've got to love Brian Cox as Samara's on-edge father, though after watching the second X-men film you just have to wonder just how many malevolent psychic kids this guy has sired . . .

Check back next week for my top five horror film countdown!