2002 was a weird year for me. It was my 3rd year in LA, which was probably my last year at the time. I came to LA from NYC on a “3-year plan”, but I had fallen in love with the city and didn’t want to return just yet, if ever. My former partner had moved to LA in 2000 and unfortunately didn’t like the city as much as I did and moved back to NY in late 2001. So 2002 was about re-learning my way in a big city and a new-to-me neighborhood, alone and single. I jumped at moments of chance invites to make new friends, which led me to see THE RING for the first time. There was an early screening of it in Pasadena that my shaky memory says was tied to a Fangoria convention happening concurrently.
THE RING wasn’t quite finished when I first saw it. It had no score or soundtrack, and some post-sound wasn’t completed either. It also wasn’t a marketing research event where we had to give our insights into what worked and what didn’t for us. It was just a “We’re going to get a bunch of horror fans together to see this movie based on a Japanese horror film. It’s supposed to be really good, and we hope you enjoy it and tell your friends about it.” Even unfinished, THE RING was very unsettling and provided enough good scares. It’s a film that exists in a unique time. DVDs were becoming a big part of our lives, but VHS was still there for us. We could still record things off the TV, VHS camcorders were still around, and our local Blockbuster carried them. If THE RING were a new film in 2023, it would need to be about cellphone cam footage that folks text around or view on a TikTok channel.
I loved THE RING so much 21 years ago that I bought both the DVD and the DVD of RINGU, the 1998 Japanese film it was based on. A lot of remakes don’t do justice to the original, but THE RING is a special case that improves upon the former, which was based on an early ’90s Japanese novel. Over the years, I’d watch it, and it never quite held up to the very first time because I knew where it was going. So I decided to take a break, and I put the DVDs away and hadn’t revisited the film in over a decade until this past weekend.
CINESPIA, one of Los Angeles’ long-running outdoor film screening series, was playing it, and I jumped at the chance to see it again on a big screen. What made the moment even sweeter was taking a friend who had never seen it. The days of VHS tapes have long passed, replaced with everything digital and viewable on demand. I wondered if there was anyone in the audience who didn’t know what a VHS tape was. And somehow, this movie, which is completely focused on expired technology, stole my heart again and was absolutely as thrilling as the first time. I was glad I had forgotten who many of the supporting cast is, which includes Brian Cox, Amber Tamblyn, and Adam Brody. The actor who played Rachel (Naomi Watts) ‘s son Aiden in the movie is now 30, so cheers to feeling old.
THE RING is not a gory movie, but you might turn away a few times while watching. It’s not quite on the same level as MIDSOMMAR or THE WITCH, but it is more of an older cousin to those than the SAW films or anything in THE CONJURING universe. IT FOLLOWS, a cult-classic horror film from 2014, feels like it could be a younger sibling for sure. It doesn’t have or need bloody scenes to leave you with an extreme feeling of unease. It creeps under your skin and might leave you worried the next time you see a creepy viral video.
THE RING is currently streaming on Paramount+, FUBO, and MGM+. You can also buy or rent it digitally or buy it on Blu-ray.
