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The story begins with two teenage girls discussing the events of the previous weekend, during which one of them, Katie Embry (played by Amber Tamblyn), went to a cabin in the mountains to spend time with some friends. While talking, the subject of a supposedly cursed videotape is brought up. The other girl, Rebecca 'Becca' Kotler (played by Rachael Bella), states that anyone who watches this video receives a phone call, in which a voice says, "seven days." Then, exactly seven days after viewing the tape, the viewer dies. Katie reveals in horror that she had watched that video at the cabin last weekend, exactly seven days earlier. After a series of unexplainable occurrences, involving televisions in the house turning themselves on and unexplained pools of water, Katie is mysteriously killed, while Becca goes insane.
The film then introduces Katie's aunt, Rachel (played by Naomi Watts), a journalist living in Seattle. Her son, Aiden, was not only Katie's cousin but also a good friend, and seems to be sensitive to psychic occurrences. At Katie's funeral Rachel begins investigating Katie's death and learns of the videotape. Her investigation leads her to the same cabin in the mountains where the teenagers had watched the tape. There, she finds the tape and eventually watches it. She makes a copy for Aiden's father Noah, and Aiden himself watches it a few days later.
Rachel's investigation then turns to the tape itself, which contains a seemingly random series of disturbing, grainy black and white images. Investigating those images leads Rachel to learn of a girl, Samara, who had been adopted and then murdered by those parents. They had killed Samara when they believed she had caused her mother to go insane as well as causing the deaths of several horses. Rachel is eventually led to where the girl was killed; a watery grave at the bottom of a well. Rachel notifies the authorities, and Samara is given a proper burial, presumably putting her spirit to rest.
At this point it seems that everything is well again, and Rachel informs Aiden that they will no longer be troubled by Samara. However, Aiden quickly corrects her and says that Samara's spirit has been released, evident by the bruises on his arm. In the film's most unsettling and memorable scene, Noah is going over some film prints in his apartment when his TV turns on to static, in the same fashion that Rachel's niece Katie experienced before her death. Noah turns it off casually before the TV turns itself on again, which alerts Noah. He is then treated to a recurring image of a well, in which a long-haired female figure crawls out of the well and slowly walks toward the screen. It intensifies as Noah quickly backs away and the figure literally crawls out of the television set. Noah knocks over a shelf in fear and crawls away before turning around, only to have the figure stare directly at him, causing his inevitable death which Rachel discovers after racing to his apartment. Rachel and Aiden realize that the only way to escape Samara after watching the video is to make a copy of the tape and show it to someone else, thus continuing the cycle.
In an episode of "The O.C", Seth Cohen (played by Adam Brody) tells Ryan Atwood not to read a letter because "it's like the ring" if you read it you'll die.
Larry the Cable Guy experiences the consequences of ignoring his wife in a sketch entitled "The Ring III: Till Death Do Us Part". After ignoring his wife's requests for housework while watching television, Larry is attacked by the aforementioned wife emerging from the television, griping about his lack of effort in their marriage.
In the Family Guy season 5 episode "Mother Tucker," a cutaway scene shows a girl telling Peter not to watch the video tape because afterwards one dies. Despite this he turns it on and it turns out to be Mannequin. Peter dies shortly after he watches the tape.
In the PS2 version of The Suffering, there is a level with a hole blown in the wall. When the player crawls through the hole, he or she ends up in an office with a static-filled closed circuit monitor, and a red phone on the guard's desk is ringing. By answering the phone, a little girl is heard saying "You will die in seven days."
In an episode of Will & Grace when Jack and Grace are cleaning Will and Grace's apartment, one of them happens to come across a water ring left by a glass on a wooden table. When Jack realises how Will will not take kindly to this, he exclaims, "Oh my god! First he sees the ring, and then we die..."
The Interview with a Campfire movie in the Rugrats series featured a scene in which one of the friends went missing. When Angelica wandered around the area where the person had disappeared, the television burst into static and a cartoon version of the cursed videotape began to play.
A man goes into a video dating room and picks out a video that happens to be the cursed videotape. He sits down and he sees a well, with a ghostly figure coming out. The figure comes out of the TV screen and lifts back its hair to show that it is Samara, who goes on about her interests and typical date video content. It concludes with her running back into the TV and the man saying "I think I just shit my heart out!" He then comments, "I wonder if she puts out."
In the episode "Fear Itself", Beast Boy explains a scary movie thus: "They say when you watch this video, strange things happen" - a reference to The Ring.
There is a television early on in the 'Haunted Mansion' level of the story mode, on which the circle of light shown in the American version of the film is played. Also, a ghost girl appears twice who bears a distinct resemblance to Samara.
When the main character crawls through a tunnel early in the game, the tunnel looks like the well from the film complete with a bright white light at the end. Also, if the character tries to turn the television on it shows nothing but static. One supporting character gets killed and returns as a ghostly figure with long black hair covering her face just like Samara.
In this online RPG, the town of Amityvale has a quest called "The Well" that spoofs The Ring, where you must go into a well full of undead to rescue the paladin, Artix, who went to retrieve a girl's ring, but has to return it in seven days. If you choose to look up the well at the beginning of the quest, you see a view identical to the 'ring' from the cursed videotape.
The game features a ghost called "Woman In Box" which at one point crawls out of a well underneath a mansion croaking. The ghost's hair also covers most of her face.
On February 3, 2007, an SNL Digital Short named Body Fusion was aired. The sketch, under the guise of an 1980s fitness video, was purposely altered to resemble an old, worn-out VHS tape. When SNL network NBC posted a second version of the sketch on YouTube, it contained a new ending in which, using film footage, we see the characters of The Ring to be watching the video.
In one level early on in the game, if you go to one place, you will see a couple of children around a well and a ghost girl that looks similar to Samara bobbing in and out of the well.
The ending to the Video of the Gorillaz single Dare included Noodle, a Japanese character with long black hair, suddenly stopping as the Camera homed in on her eye, moving to another scene. She would later confess that this part had been directly inspired by The Ring Franchise in the Gorillaz Biography, Rise of the Ogre
Trivia
The success of The Ring opened the way for American remakes of several other Japanese horror films, including The Grudge and Dark Water. A sequel, The Ring Two, was released in North American theaters on March 18, 2005. It was directed by Hideo Nakata, the director of the original Japanese film.
Just before the release of the sequel, The Ring was re-released with an extra disc that had a fifteen minute short film, Rings, which was intended to bridge The Ring and The Ring Two. Rings is also included as a special feature in the DVD release of The Ring Two.
There was a subplot that was dropped from the film, having been written and shot that featured Chris Cooper as a child murderer. Cooper's villainous character appears in the beginning of the film, who tries to convince journalist Rachel (Watts) that he has been rehabilitated and ready to reenter society. But Rachel sees through this facade and helps put him back in jail. At the end of the film, Rachel drops off a copy of the videotape for him at the mental hospital where he is staying. The only remainder of this subplot is a picture of Cooper in a newspaper article, which Noah picks up his coffee mug from.
Adam Brody makes an appearance as one of the teens talking about the cursed tape at Katie's funeral.
There are brief flashes of the "ring" motif throughout the film. There is at least one instance of a barely detectable single frame of the ring being spliced into the film between scenes, such as at 57:35, just after the horse jumps off the ferry. The ring also appears briefly during the opening DreamWorks logo.
Ringu wasn't released in theaters when The Ring was in theaters, but appeared on DVD around the DVD release of The Ring.
The "Don't Watch This" feature on the DVD has outtakes from the film that are edited into a short film. It also appears on the VHS version after the film's end credits. We discover from the scenes that the camp ground owner near the well also saw the tape. Noah discovers his body in a canoe on the lake near the camp when he and Rachel returned there on day 7. The camp owner presumably watched the film shortly before Rachel. The deleted scenes also show Rachel renting two movies, Pokémon: The First Movie and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, which she presumably did to return her and her son's copy of the tape.
On the DVD box cover featuring the photograph of the well scene, and also the well scene in the cursed video as shown in the movie, the sum of the composition of the frame is Samara staring out at the viewer. The well itself are her nostrils, the haze in the mid-ground is her face, while the trees in the background contain her eyes and form the hair that partially obstructs her face.
As an exclusive DVD feature; if you move the cursor one up from the "Play Movie" option, the uncut version of the tape is played. Interesting to note is that you cannot fast-forward, stop, pause or backtrack the video. The only way not to watch the track is to switch off the television. After this track plays, the DVD returns to a faux main menu which is identical to the real main menu, except a ringing phone is heard. If the viewer has a home theatre system, the ring is sounded through the rear speakers, increasing the illusion that their phone is actually ringing.
When the movie was released on VHS in North America, the video was packaged in a transparent plastic sleeve rather than a standard cardboard one. This gives the video the appearance of a rental tape one would find at a local store. The DVD came in a standard black keep case.
At one point in the film, in the scene where Rachel is researching Anna Morgan and Moesko Island, she finds information on a website which is located at: http://www.moeskoislandlighthouse.com. This one-page website actually existed until it was discontinued in 2004. The website has since been copied and placed at: http://www.sweb.cz/moesko/
Emo/Horror Punk band Aiden took their name from the child in the movie, and sampled a quote from the movie in their song "I Set My Friends On Fire".
During the cursed video, approximately 25 seconds in, a young boy's voice can be heard faintly singing about a weeping willow. This audiotrack is sampled from the 1961 classic The Innocents.
A crossbuster logo is briefly visible inside a locker. This is a reference to Gregor Verbinski's previous experience directing videos for punk band Bad Religion.
Samara Morgan was re-introduced as a fighter for the M.U.G.E.N. fighting engine, often using brutal, violent attacks invloving a lot of blood. She speaks in japanese and her fighting intros are strongly based off of the movies she was in.
This is one of a few films to be rated PG-13 in the USA but to then get an MA rating (equivalent to the US R rating) in Australia.
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