You Won’t Regret Rewatching <em>The Ring</em>
The 2002 horror film The Ring can be summarized in a delightfully analog fashion: After finding a VHS tape and receiving a phone call, a local newspaper reporter searches library archives to solve a mystery. As John Mulaney would say, that is a very old-fashioned sentence.
But while audiences today have little to fear from a ghost that travels by VHS and kills by landline, the terrors in Gore Verbinski’s modern classic are oddly resonant. The threat at the center of the movie isn’t the technology; it’s the spread of a story. And whether an urban legend whispered at a ’90s slumber party or a viral anecdote shared and reshared online, alluring half-truths present a certain danger when circulated.
The Ring was a phenomenon when it came out 19 years ago. It set off a wave of J-horror remakes, rekindled the supernatural monster movie, and gave audiences one of the best shock endings of all time. But in the “prestige horror” era, it offers a warning about the temptations and responsibilities of sharing.
And so, in the spirit of the Halloween season, Atlantic staffers revisited The Ring for an episode of our culture podcast, The Review. Listen to Sophie Gilbert, David Sims, and Lenika Cruz here:
The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity. It contains spoilers.
It was Halloween this weekend, so we decided to step away from new releases and watch what I think all of us consider a classic horror movie: Gore Verbinski’s 2002 movie, , which, of course, is the remake of the Japanese horror movie. In the almost-20 years since it came out, it has had a vast influence on horror movies, and we wanted to rewatch and see if it holds up as a modern horror classic. David, are you a fan?
