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Rarely has a more serious effort produced a less serious result than in "The Ring," the kind of dread dark horror film where you better hope nobody in the audience snickers, because the film teeters right on the edge of the ridiculous.

Enormous craft has been put into the movie, which looks just great, but the story goes beyond contrivance into the dizzy realms of the absurd. And although there is no way for everything to be explained (and many events lack any possible explanation), the movie's ending explains and explains and explains, until finally you'd rather just give it a pass than sit through one more tedious flashback.

The story involves a video that brings certain death. You look at it, the phone rings, and you find out you have seven days to live. A prologue shows some teenage victims of the dread curse, and then newspaper reporter Rachel Keller ( Naomi Watts ) gets on the case, helped by eerie drawings by her young son, Aidan ( David Dorfman ).

The story has been recycled from a popular Japanese thriller by Hideo Nakata , which was held off the market in this country to clear the field for this remake. Alas, the same idea was ripped off in August by "feardotcom," also a bad movie, but more plain fun than "The Ring," and with a climax that used brilliant visual effects while this one drags on endlessly.

I dare not reveal too much of the story but will say that the video does indeed bring death in a week, something we are reminded of as Rachel tries to solve the case while titles tick off the days. A single mom, she enlists Aidan's father, a video geek named Noah ( Martin Henderson ) to analyze the deadly tape. He tags along for the adventure, which inevitably leads to their learning to care for one another, I guess, although the movie is not big on relationships. Her investigation leads her to a remote cottage on an island and to the weird, hostile man ( Brian Cox ) who lives there. And then the explanations start to pile up.

This is Naomi Watts' first move since " Mulholland Drive " and I was going to complain that we essentially learn nothing about her character except that she's a newspaper reporter--but then I remembered that in "Mulholland Drive" we essentially learned nothing except that she was a small-town girl in Hollywood, and by the end of the movie we weren't even sure we had learned that. "Mulholland Drive," however, evoked juicy emotions and dimensions that "The Ring" is lacking, and involved us in a puzzle that was intriguing instead of simply tedious.

There are a couple of moments when we think "The Ring" is going to end, and it doesn't. One is that old reliable where the heroine, soaking wet and saved from death, says "I want to go home," and the hero cushions her head on his shoulder. But no, there's more. Another is when Aidan says, "You didn't let her out, did you?" That would have been a nice ironic closer, but the movie spells out the entire backstory in merciless detail, until when we're finally walking out of the theater, we're almost ashamed to find ourselves wondering, hey, who was that on the phone?

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

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Film credits.

The Ring (2002)

Rated PG-13 For Thematic Elements, Disturbing Images, Language and Some Drug References

115 minutes

Naomi Watts as Rachel Keller

Martin Henderson as Noah

Brian Cox as Richard Morgan

David Dorfman as Aidan

Lindsay Frost as Ruth

Amber Tamblyn as Katie

Directed by

• Gore Verbinski
• Ehren Kruger

Based On The Novel by

• Koji Suzuki

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'The Ring' Review: A Not-So-Scary But Perfect Horror Movie

More haunting than scary, The Ring still stands up as a horror classic.

Let's start with this. The Ring is not scary, or at least not to yours truly, but that does not mean it doesn't deserve its status as a horror classic. It's a haunting, psychological nightmare, a race against a personal doomsday clock, and a thought-provoking look at media, relationships, and assumptions. And it is fantastic.

What Is 'The Ring' About?

For those that have not seen the film, here's a brief synopsis. A mysterious videotape kills anyone who watches it after seven days, including journalist Rachel Keller's ( Naomi Watts ) niece. While investigating, Rachel watches the videotape herself, a disturbing series of images and brief clips, and is notably distraught when she answers the phone after watching the video and hears, "you will die in seven days." She asks her video analyst ex-boyfriend Noah ( Martin Henderson ), the father of her son Aidan ( David Dorfman ), for his opinion on the video. Noah's skeptical, but asks Rachel for a copy of the video to look deeper into it. Growing more convinced that the video is indeed cursed, Rachel is horrified when she finds out Aidan has watched the video as well, and now also only has seven days to live. Over the next number of days, Noah and Rachel tie the video back to Samara Morgan ( Daveigh Chase ), a young girl who had the ability to burn images into the things that surrounded her, including the minds of her mother and the family's horses, all driven to kill themselves as a result... but not before the mother pushed Samara into a well to die.

A Dreary and Bleak Color Palette

The look of the film is effectively dreary and oppressive, with the bulk of the movie filmed in a palate of blues and grays. There's water seemingly everywhere. If it isn't raining, it's the immediate aftermath of rain - wet driveways, puddles, and the like. Little puddles of water surround those killed after watching the video (we'll get there). The water places the characters in the land of the living in the same conditions Samara died in, a pool of water at the bottom of the well. There's actually a clever foreshadowing scene early on in the film, where Aidan walks down the sidewalk with an umbrella and runs into Noah, who does not have an umbrella, a nod to the ending of the film when Aidan is spared, but Noah is most decidedly not. The quick, scattershot images of the video are mimicked by images of real life - tree leaves, time-lapse clips of the sky throughout the movie - a look that makes a subtle reference to how the video creeps into the lives of the people who watch it.

RELATED: The 40 Best Horror Movies of the 2000s

A Metaphor for the Dangers of the Media

The Ring speaks to media, and how it can distort truths and impact lives. The videotape literally impacts the lives of the people who watch it. Besides impending death, photos and live videos of those who watch it are distorted or scratched out; a cancel culture, if you will, long before that became a thing. Televisions are prevalent throughout the film, not only as a portal for evil but an object that harms (it's the TV that knocks Rachel into the well) and kills (the TV is the last object Richard Morgan ( Brian Cox ) plugs in before killing himself). The video itself is the perfect metaphor for how media can distort truths, a means of leading Rachel and Noah to one conclusion while hiding its true malicious intent.

Character Development

The characters and their relationships in the movie are other fascinating elements of the film. Rachel begins the film as someone who sees herself as above others. When Aidan's teacher asks to talk to Rachel about Aidan, she very noticeably dismisses the classroom chair pulled out for her, opting to sit on the desk, placing her higher than the seated teacher. She's barely a mother, evidenced by Aidan's self-reliance and insistence on calling her "Rachel" and not "mom." As the film progresses, Rachel grows more humble and maternal, especially upon learning of Samara's death at the hands of her mother. She, too, was on the verge of pushing her child away, so when we see her lying on the bed next to her son, at an equal level, it's a well-earned recognition of her growth.

Her relationship with Noah deepens over the course of the film as well, two lives bound by an urgency to save not only themselves but their son, which makes the movie's ending that much more heartbreaking, with Rachel coming to terms with the fact that it was her actions that doomed Noah. Ultimately, it's the broken relationship between Samara and her parents that even started the train rolling, so to speak. Would there be a cursed videotape if they had found some sort of peace?

Gore Verbinski's Directing Is Masterful

The film contains many memorable, well-crafted scenes, a testament to Gore Verbinski 's skill as a director. The opening scene draws you into the film immediately, explaining the basic premise of the story before following Rachel's niece, Katie ( Amber Tamblyn ), increasing horror as she realizes that anything around her could bring about her death. The scene on the ferry, where Rachel's presence spooks a large black horse in his trailer so badly that it kicks open the door and runs about the ferry in terror before leaping to its death in the waters, is fast-paced and wildly uncomfortable. When we see Samara on video talking to a doctor at the mental institute about her inability to stop burning images with her mind, it's a subtle line between feeling empathy for her and fear of her. And the end scene...

A Perfect Cast

Not yet. First, the actors: a cast that does a great job with their roles. Naomi Watts is perfect, capturing the wild rollercoaster of emotions Rachel goes through with sometimes nothing more than the look on her face. Young David Dorfman understands Aidan, portraying the character as a child forced to be self-sufficient, with a hint of resentment lying underneath his actions and speech. Martin Henderson deftly displays Noah's growth from cynic to believer to parent. Daveigh Chase is a revelation, her Samara is a balance between a scared little girl and evil intent when alive and full-on vengeful when dead.

An Ending No One Saw Coming

Now, the ending, far and away the best part of the movie. All along, Rachel is led to the belief that what Samara wanted was for the truth to come out, to be rescued from the well and laid to rest. And we, the viewers, believe it too. From movies like The Sixth Sense or Insidious: The Last Key , we're accustomed to that story. So when that gets twisted, and we learn that Samara is a restless, vengeful spirit who will never stop, we're just as shocked as Rachel. But who's more shocked than Rachel? Noah. The TV in his apartment turns on to show Samara crawling out of the well towards the screen, out of the screen , and towards Noah, her face locked in rage and her body dripping water from the well.

When Rachel arrives too late and finds Noah dead, she struggles to think why she was spared and Noah was not. When the revelation hits that it's because she made a copy of the video and showed Noah, thus passing the curse along, she has Aidan make a copy of the video himself. As the copy is being made, Aidan asks Rachel a question that ends the film on a haunting, bleak note: "What about the person we show it to? What happens to them?" That's where the film ends. Rachel doesn't answer. Rachel can't answer. She's seen what happens, she's the reason it happened to Noah, and now in order to save Aidan, she has to do it again. Brilliant.

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Common sense media reviewers.

Remake of Japanese horror film is terrifying and creepy.

A Lot or a Little?

What you will—and won't—find in this movie.

In Hollywood Horrorland, wronged dead people have

Decades ago, a husband and wife treated their diff

The soundtrack is filled with the spitting of unen

A 16-year-old girl mentions in an aside that she s

"S--t," "prick," "bitch," "damn."

Teenagers and adults smoke cigarettes. Someone men

Parents need to know that The Ring is a 2002 remake of a Japanese film that is very, very scary. Four people and a horse die on-screen, with the potential for many more untimely demises throughout. The soundtrack is filled with the spitting of unending Seattle rain, echoing orchestral strains of doom and loud…

Positive Messages

In Hollywood Horrorland, wronged dead people have inexplicable evil magical powers that they feel the need to use on innocent strangers.

Positive Role Models

Decades ago, a husband and wife treated their difficult young daughter badly, ending in the girl's death. The girl's vivid and lingering anger is expressed for decades after her demise in supernatural revenge against both her mother, her father, and, later, innocent strangers for no apparent reason. A mother who believes that she and her young son are doomed to die owing to a supernatural curse searches frantically for answers.

Violence & Scariness

The soundtrack is filled with the spitting of unending Seattle rain, echoing orchestral strains of doom and loud and relentless guttural sound effects, all adding to the scariness. A dead girl's face decomposes in a few seconds. Refrigerators open themselves. Screws unscrew themselves. Wells cover themselves. Water seeps out of nowhere. Handprints appear and then disappear just as mysteriously. A horse seems to go mad for no reason, violently escapes his trailer, runs amok, and then jumps off a ferry into a river to his death. Blood is seen in the water. Several people have spontaneous nosebleeds. A man kills himself using electric cords and an overflowing bath tub. A dead girl is found wearing an expression of horror. A woman tumbles down a deep well, where she discovers a girl's dead body. On television, in a grainy black-and-white video, a long-dead girl emerges from a well looking gray and menacing, then climbs out of the TV set and causes the frightening death of an innocent man. A woman throws a bag over her daughter's head and tosses her down a well. In addition to unremitting scariness, this movie also continually poses the question "why?" and then never answers it, which is even scarier.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Violence & Scariness in your kid's entertainment guide.

Sex, Romance & Nudity

A 16-year-old girl mentions in an aside that she stayed at a cabin with her boyfriend without parental knowledge. Her friend asks if they "did anything." A woman in bra and underpants looks for a dress. A character in a wet T-shirt.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Sex, Romance & Nudity in your kid's entertainment guide.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Language in your kid's entertainment guide.

Drinking, Drugs & Smoking

Teenagers and adults smoke cigarettes. Someone mentions Vicodin.

Did you know you can flag iffy content? Adjust limits for Drinking, Drugs & Smoking in your kid's entertainment guide.

Parents Need to Know

Parents need to know that The Ring is a 2002 remake of a Japanese film that is very, very scary. Four people and a horse die on-screen, with the potential for many more untimely demises throughout. The soundtrack is filled with the spitting of unending Seattle rain, echoing orchestral strains of doom and loud and relentless guttural sound effects, all adding to the scariness. A dead girl's face decomposes in a few seconds. Water seeps out of nowhere. Handprints appear and then disappear just as mysteriously. Blood is seen in the water. Several people have spontaneous nosebleeds. A man kills himself using electric cords and an overflowing bath tub. A dead girl is found wearing an expression of horror. A woman tumbles down a deep well, where she discovers a girl's dead body. On television, in a grainy black-and-white video, a long-dead girl emerges from a well looking gray and menacing, then climbs out of the TV set and causes the frightening death of an innocent man. A woman throws a bag over her daughter's head and tosses her down a well. Profanity includes "s--t," "prick," "bitch," and "damn." To stay in the loop on more movies like this, you can sign up for weekly Family Movie Night emails .

Where to Watch

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Community Reviews

• Parents say (56)
• Kids say (262)

Based on 56 parent reviews

I am a strict mom on movies but this one was ok for the kids

Okay for mature teens, what's the story.

In THE RING, a remake of a Japanese horror film based on a series of books, urban legend meets scary movie reality when four teens die, as predicted, exactly seven days to the minute from when they watched an unmarked video in a remote mountain cabin. Rachel ( Naomi Watts ), the aunt of one of the teenagers, is a savvy and skeptical journalist whose curiosity is sparked by tales of the tape. After finding and watching the source of the mystery, she receives a phone call announcing that she has seven days to live. From there, it is a race to solve the clues and answer the riddle of the video, with the stakes greatly raised when two of the people closest to her, including her young son, watch the deadly tape.

Is It Any Good?

Director Gore Verbinski does an excellent job of letting our imaginations find portent and peril in the most mundane of actions, such as picking up groceries at the local corner store. Watts is a relief as she plays through the gamut of Rachel's emotions with truly credible, but not overwrought, gusto. While the adults are busy solving the riddle of the tape, the heart-stopping pair of the Ring's children usher in the deeper dimension of fear. Rachel's son, Aiden (a stony-eyed David Dorfman ), is the medium and interpreter for the terrifying Samara ( Daveigh Chase ), who is at the heart of the mystery.

The Ring dips deep in the well of oft-used scary images, which paradoxically results in a movie that is both architecturally firm but, with little new to add, empty of true revelation.

Talk to Your Kids About ...

Families can talk about the decision that Rachel makes at the end of The Ring and the ramifications of her actions. Did she make the right decision? Why, or why not?

Discuss the way that different characters deal with the untimely death of a loved one.

For fans who have seen the original Japanese tale, how does this movie compare? If you have seen the sequels, how does this one stack up?

What is the appeal of scary movies?

Movie Details

• In theaters : October 18, 2002
• On DVD or streaming : March 4, 2003
• Cast : Amber Tamblyn , Martin Henderson , Naomi Watts
• Director : Gore Verbinski
• Inclusion Information : Female actors
• Studio : DreamWorks
• Genre : Horror
• Run time : 115 minutes
• MPAA rating : PG-13
• MPAA explanation : thematic elements, disturbing images, language and some drug references
• Last updated : April 10, 2024

Did we miss something on diversity?

Research shows a connection between kids' healthy self-esteem and positive portrayals in media. That's why we've added a new "Diverse Representations" section to our reviews that will be rolling out on an ongoing basis. You can help us help kids by suggesting a diversity update.

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• DVD & Streaming

Content Caution

In Theaters

• Naomi Watts as Rachel; David Dorfman as Aidan; Martin Henderson as Noah; Brian Cox as Richard Morgan; Amber Tamblyn as Katie; Rachael Bella as Becca; Daveigh Chase as Samara

Home Release Date

• Gore Verbinski

Distributor

Movie review.

It’s a nightmare of disconnected images encased in the plastic shell of a videotape. It always knows when you’re watching it. And seven days after you do, it kills you. It’s The Ring . And Katie tells her friend Becca that she watched it a week ago. . . .

Now Becca spends her days at a mental hospital in a sedated fog after seeing Katie’s rotting corpse. And others are already dead, or dying. An investigative journalist with an eye for a good story, Katie’s cousin, Rachel, tracks down the tape. She watches it. And she promptly receives a phone call with only two hissed words: “Seven days.” Rachel’s obviously a little scared. She makes a copy of the tape and enlists the help of her friend and former lover, Noah, to unravel its mystery. He watches it. And he receives a phone call as well. Now Rachel has moved beyond scared to absolutely terrified. Realizing that the fragmented images on the tape are actually a message, Rachel and Noah follow the clues to the horse farm of Richard Morgan. But it’s no ordinary horse farm. The horses are all dead (they drowned themselves). Richard’s wife has committed suicide. And his daughter, Samara, has disappeared. Time is ticking.

positive elements: A couple of tangential themes have a positive slant, such as the need for parents to be more involved with their children and the importance of intact families. Rachel remarks at several points that she knows she works too much and by the end of the film she devotes a chunk of quality time to her son, Aidan. At one point Noah and Aidan discuss their relationship as father and son, with Aidan saying he doesn’t really want a father and Noah saying he has stayed out of Aidan’s life because he didn’t want to be a bad parent. (With obvious pain, Noah recounts his own father’s failed attempts at parenting.) Despite his comments to the contrary, Aidan shows joy when it seems like Noah and Rachel are going to reunite.

spiritual content: The Ring posits a world where marauding and malevolent spirits seek to kill as many as possible without rhyme or reason. Various mystical goings-on occur as well. The videotape appears quite literally out of thin air, with no identifying marks. Someone always calls those who watch the tape within seconds of them having finished it. During an interview, Samara says that various microfiche pictures she owns simply appear ex nihilo. Those who view the tape mysteriously spring nosebleeds and their faces blur when recorded on film. A corpse that seems merely a day old dissolves into a skeleton in a matter of seconds. Water leaks from phones and televisions. Nails and screws spontaneously pull away from their moorings. A rotting figure physically steps out of a television. Aidan displays a precognitive ability and says he speaks with people who aren’t present. Horses fall into a mad frenzy around those who have viewed the tape. Altercations with figures in dreams leave bruises on people once they awake. All in all, it’s the typical and inexplicable stuff of supernatural horror films.

sexual content: Although nothing is shown, Rachel and Noah obvious had a sexual relationship in the past. Near the end of the film they kiss and hold hands. In an early scene, Rachel appears in her underwear while changing clothes. A line of dialogue and a photograph indicate that Katie and her boyfriend had slept together. One shot on the video shows a group of squiggling larvae turn into writhing naked bodies (they’re so tiny that no explicit nudity is visible).

violent content: A man in a bathtub vividly electrocutes himself. A frantic horse breaks out of its trailer when Rachel approaches and throws itself off of a ferry where it is promptly shredded by the propellers (audiences see the water behind the ship turn red). A woman strangles someone and throws the body into a well (unbeknownst to her, the person is still alive). A woman is struck by a TV. Richard Morgan hits Rachel with a halter. While trying to find more clues about the tape, Noah trashes a hotel room and violently axes up its floor. Rachel smashes a videotape, then burns it. While trying to flee, a man slices open his hands on broken glass, leaving behind bloody handprints. Spirits kill numerous people (the gory aftermath is sometimes seen).

crude or profane language: Close to 10 uses of the s-word along with six milder profanities and four crudities. God and Jesus’ names are profaned nearly 10 times.

drug and alcohol content: Becca jokes about stealing Vicodin from Katie’s mom. While talking with a bunch of Katie’s under-18 friends, Rachel bums a cigarette from one and jokes about getting high when she was younger. One of the friends of Katie’s family hypothesizes that she must have been on drugs since she died from a massive stroke. Noah smokes cigarettes.

other negative elements: Noah lies about his identity in order to gain access to medical files. Samara says that she wants to hurt people. The tape, which audiences view several times, features disturbing black and white images such as a nail piercing a finger, something slithering out of a mouth, dead horses on a beach and severed digits in a box. Fast edits show explicit images of the horror-transfixed, decaying corpses of those who died from viewing the tape. [ Spoiler Warning ] By far the worst aspect of the film involves its plot twist at the end. In order to placate an evil spirit, Rachel disseminates copies of the film, guaranteeing that even more people will die, but that she and Aidan will live.

conclusion: Surprise endings have become all the rage. The Sixth Sense and Signs provide stimulating and creative conclusions. Abandon and The Rich Man’s Wife close so unconvincingly that they are instantly laughable. But The Ring is in a category of its own. Well-shot, decently acted and genuinely scary, this remake of the smash Japanese hit Ringu relentlessly betrays its audience’s trust. A happy ending suddenly and inexplicably becomes terrifying. Sympathetic characters turn evil in an instant. And frightened audiences leave with the message: Looking out for yourself is better than noble self-sacrifice, even if it means subjecting others to the same nightmarish end you yourself are trying to avoid. Want my appraisal of this tarnished Ring ? Forget the obvious plot holes. It’s the dishonorable theme and harsh mysticism that drive its value below zero.

Loren Eaton

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‘The Ring’ (2002) creepily brings J-horror to US

When I saw “The Ring” (2002) in theaters, people openly gasped at the moment when Samara (Daveigh Chase) crawls through the TV screen. That’d be less scary today because it’s obvious that a girl can’t fit inside a flatscreen TV. Still, despite now-dated trappings such as boxy TV sets, VHS tapes and landline telephones, “The Ring” holds up as a great and hugely influential horror film, one poised at the intersection of commercial and artistic concerns.

(And actually, the fact that Samara needs people to copy a VHS tape allows this to be a slow-burn story; once YouTube came along, she could wipe out the human race in mere days.)

From Japan to Seattle

Granted, it’s not an original work, as director Gore Verbinski and writer Ehren Kruger adapt the 1998 Japanese film “Ring.” The US version moves the story to Seattle, tinged in a blue-green-gray hue by cinematographer Bojan Bazelli and featuring even more rain than in real life. A ferry ride and a world away sits a horse farm on an island where this yarn has its roots. The water motif abounds.

“The Ring” (2002)

Director: Gore Verbinski

Writers: Ehren Kruger (screenplay), Koji Suzuki (novel)

Stars: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, Brian Cox

Rachel (Naomi Watts) pursues the case of the missing Samara Morgan as part of her reporter job at the Post-Intelligencer, but it’s also personal. She, her son Aidan (David Dorfman) and her ex-boyfriend Noah (Martin Henderson) have all watched the pivotal VHS tape. It looks like a student film of creepy impressionist images, but they receive phone calls immediately after viewing it: A girl’s voice tells them they will die in “seven days.”

Through the ringing telephone and the opening segment, “The Ring” evokes turn-of-the-century American slashers (Kruger wrote 2000’s “Scream 3” ) before it transitions to atmospheric J-horror remakes. Teen girls Katie (a pre- “Joan of Arcadia” Amber Tamblyn) and Becca (Rachael Bella) discuss the rumored existence of this very tape in a sequence that could be out of something cheesy like an “Urban Legend” sequel .

But when we later see a quick shot of frozen terror on the deceased Katie’s face, we move to something less explicitly unsettling.

Unsettling in a new way

“Ring” and its American translation are trope codifiers for pasty ghost girls with damp black hair covering their face. And they mark the resurgence of little kids who receive supernatural communications and translate them via drawings, and the re-emergence of pop-horror as serious stuff.

Nowadays, the opening graphic for Blumhouse – the maker of many low-budget but high-quality horror films – features one of those creepy girls and a chair in a room in a rundown house; those images can be traced back to the splash made by this evocatively waterlogged film.

“The Ring” is gorgeously designed in every way – an aural and visual signifier that moody ghost stories are nudging slashers aside. Hans Zimmer’s score and the sound design set the mood, and among the striking images is an overhead shot of Rachel and Noah driving on a forest highway that bridges a gorge with a waterfall nearby.

The VHS tape in question includes mesmerizing glimpses of a tree on a hilltop, a severe-looking woman combing her hair in a mirror, and what looks like a solar eclipse. It’s actually a cover being placed atop a well, and the corona of light gives the film its title.

Driven by the mystery

Also setting “The Ring” apart in 2002 is that it’s driven by a mystery. Without abandoning the foreboding feel, the story chronicles Rachel and Noah digging into what the heck the video means. Watts is an excellent Everywoman (albeit cuter than average), conveying curiosity and surprise as she digs through the P-I’s archives.

Noah’s estrangement with Rachel and Aidan – he didn’t feel capable of being a dad, since he was so young — is B-level stuff, but that’s forgivable because it’s not the main point.

A strong supporting turn comes from Brian Cox as closed-lipped farm owner Richard Morgan. And in smaller roles, it’s fun to see Tamblyn, “The O.C.’s” Adam Brody and “NCIS’s” Pauley Perrette just before their TV careers took off.

The structure of “The Ring” is clever considering that it’s establishing a template in so many ways. Rachel’s attempt to solve the mystery and survive the seven-day period is not the whole story. Another 15 minutes come after that, serving up one of the best “one last scares” in genre history.

When Samara crawls out of that TV, it cuts into our sense of safety from knowing there’s a screen between our living room and whatever horrors lay on the other side.

Click here to visit our Horror Zone.

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10 Underrated Japanese Horror Movies That Escaped An American Remake

The ring is the best japanese horror remake, the 15 best asian horror movies.

• The Ring franchise, which includes 14 films, began with the 1995 TV film Ringu , and its popularity has influenced the horror genre.
• The franchise offers two different ways to watch the films: in order of release date or in chronological order of events.
• Each film in the franchise contributes to the overarching storyline and expands on the lore of the curse, introducing new characters and plot twists.

The critically acclaimed horror franchise The Ring movies, in order, consists of several timelines, remakes, and sequels, making it hard to keep track of its fourteen films' order by release date and chronology. While there have been several remakes of the franchise, The Ring movies' popularity began with its 1998 feature-length film Ringu . The film became a pioneer for the J-horror genre and earned worldwide critical acclaim thanks to its achievements in visuals, sound design, and cinematography. The Ring's chilling supernatural tale has become a major influence on the horror genre.

While it all started with the book by Koji Suzuki , The Ring's chilling story about a mysterious girl who kills characters after watching a cursed tape has inspired countless nightmares and revamps, constantly introducing audiences to characters, storylines, and universes that can be hard to keep up with. When navigating the franchise, the most common ways to watch The Ring movies are in order of release date or chronology of events , which provide two very different sequences.

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The Ring Movies In Release Order

The franchise includes 15 movies from 1995 to 2022.

The Ring franchise officially began with the 1995 film Ringu . The first of The Ring movies based on the 1991 book written by Koji Suzuki, Ringu was a straight-to-TV film released exclusively in Japan. Ringu was a hit with Japanese audiences, so much so that it was recreated as a feature-length film three years later. The introduction of 1998's Ringu reset the movie's timeline, which has since expanded ten-fold.

Throughout its 27-year run, The Ring franchise has expanded to new mediums, birthing timelines, spin-offs, and international remakes, including 2002's The Ring starring horror icon Naomi Watts . So far, 14 The Ring movies have been released between 1995 and 2022 . It all started off in Japan with the original horror movie and then moved to the United States remake, which was one of the best American females of a J-horror movie. After this, there were even spin-offs crossing over with The Grudge and movies specifically about Sadako herself.

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The Ring Movies In Chronological Order Of Events

Ring 0: birthday (2000).

The first movie in The Ring's timeline is the 2000 prequel Ring 0: Birthday . The film depicts the backstory of the vengeful Sadako Yamamura , providing context into her character and the events that led to her becoming the urban legend she later became. Set between the late 1950s and early 1960s, Ring 0: Birthday explores Sadako's struggles with her psychic powers and her complicated relationship with her father. As the film progresses, it sets up the supernatural events that become the foundation for Sadako's curse and the cursed videotape in the Ringu series.

Ring 0: Birthday explores Sadako's struggles with her psychic powers and her complicated relationship with her father.

Ring 0: Birthday is partially based on the short story Lemon Heart by Koji Suzuki. The movie received mostly bad reviews when released, although it sits at a relatively positive 62% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. It also was nominated for Fantasporto in 2001, but it lost out to Alejandro González Iñárritu's breakout movie, Amores perros .

Released In 1995

Chronologically, the next events in the franchise occur in the 1995 Japanese TV film Ringu . Set 30 years after Ring 0: Birthday , Ringu was the first-ever adaptation of the novel and is considered a stand-alone film. The story begins in Tokyo when a journalist becomes intrigued by a series of mysterious deaths occurring at an inn that have all been linked to a cursed videotape. After watching the tape, reporter Kazuyuki Asakawa becomes a victim of the curse and undergoes a quest to reverse it before his seven-day timeline runs out.

The most accurate movie when it comes to adapting the Koji Suzuki novel that the story is based on.

The film marks the first introduction of the seven-day curse and the rule of copying the tape to break the curse. While it is nowhere near as popular as the Ringu and The Ring movie series, this is actually the most accurate movie when it comes to adapting the Koji Suzuki novel that the story is based on. This movie was only released in Japan and is not available on home video.

Released In 1998

Following the TV film in the timeline is 1998's feature-length movie Ringu . Ringu follows Reiko Asakawa, a journalist actively investigating rumors of a cursed videotape. While investigating a series of murders, Reiko watches the tape and becomes the next victim of the curse. After the curse affects her son Yoichi, Reiko and her ex-husband embark on a quest to uncover the origins of the curse and find a way to break it before the seven-day deadline, which would claim the lives of herself and her son.

Ringu takes the premise of the original 1995 film and gives it a cinematic facelift.

Ringu takes the premise of the original 1995 film and gives it a cinematic facelift, with visible upgrades to the visuals, plot, and characters that helped it become one of the most ground-breaking films of the J-horror genre . In addition to being a pioneer of horror, Ringu is credited with a lot of firsts for The Ring franchise. Ringu marks the directorial debut of J-horror legend Hideo Nakata in the franchise and the first time Sadako is shown on screen crawling out of a TV .

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Immediately following Ringu (the sequel was released the same day) is 1998's Rasen , or Spiral , as it's known in the US. As the first official sequel to Ringu , Rasen is based on the Koji Suzuki novel of the same name. It follows a pathologist named Dr. Mitsuo Ando, who becomes involved in a series of mysterious deaths after he discovers that one of the deceased individuals has a connection to the same cursed videotape from Ringu .

Rasen's complexity and convoluted plot resulted in its poor critical reception, which inspired a reboot of The Ring's timeline.

After being affected by it, Dr. Ando must race against time to unravel the secrets behind the curse and the medical conspiracies rumored to be linked to it . Rasen's complexity and convoluted plot resulted in its poor critical reception, which inspired a reboot of The Ring's timeline. Although it wasn't considered canonical for years, the subsequent sequels throughout the 2000s reintroduced Rasen to The Ring's timeline.

Released In 1999

Completely disregarding Rasen , 1999's Ringu 2 reboots The Ring's timeline . The film goes back to the events immediately following 1998's Ringu , reintroducing characters like Reiko and Yoichi to the story. Ringu 2 puts Mai Takano in the forefront as Reiko still grapples with the effects of the curse. While Yoichi begins exhibiting signs of paranormal abilities, Sadako's supernatural powers grow out of control, pushing Mai to uncover the secrets behind the curse and save Yoichi from its influence.

Ringu 2 was the first movie that was not based on Suzuki's novels and stories and was instead an original tale based simply on his characters.

The reason that the franchise started over fresh was because the Rasen reviews were so bad. The restart of the franchise also caused one other major change, as Ringu 2 was the first movie that was not based on Suzuki's novels and stories and was instead an original tale based simply on his characters. Thanks to the changes, it ended up as a huge success, and was the second-highest-grossing movie in Japan in 1999 , following only Pokemon: The Movie 2000 . While critical reviews were also terrible, the box office made it a success for the studio.

The Ring Virus

The Ring Virus enters the franchise as The Ring's first international remake . Set in South Korea, the film follows the same formula as Ringu , replacing Sadako Yamamura with Park Eun Suh. The Ring Virus follows journalist Sun-Joo as she investigates a series of mysterious deaths, all linked to the viewing of a cursed videotape. The Ring Virus is a reimagining of The Ring's source material and is not considered canonical to the rest of the franchise .

The movie still received poor critical reviews.

The reason that Ringu was remade in Korea was that South Korea banned all Japanese cultural imports to the country at the time, including movies (via Variety ). As a result, the co-commissioned movie started production and brought it to the huge movie market anyway. The movie still received poor critical reviews, but its 37% Rotten Tomatoes score was still higher than the previous two Japanese movies, Rasen and Ringu 2 . However, there was never a sequel to this release.

While many of the best Japanese horror movies were cursed with subpar American remakes, there are a handful of cult classics that avoided this fate.

Released In 2002

The next movie in the timeline is the critically acclaimed American horror remake , The Ring (2002). Set sometime between 2002 and 2005 , the U.S. version of The Ring follows Rachel Keller, a journalist investigating a videotape that's been linked to the sudden death of a group of teens. The tape is rumored to be the source of an urban legend in which the viewer will die seven days after watching it. After watching the tape, Rachel has to work quickly to save her life and that of her son Aidan.

The Ring helped unlock the door for America to start remaking the ghostly Japanese horror movies, with The Grudge and Dark Water following

The film expands on The Ring's ever-evolving mythos, introducing several new key characters to the timeline , including Aidan and the story's new eerie figure Samara. The Ring helped unlock the door for America to start remaking the ghostly Japanese horror movies, with The Grudge and Dark Water following, although neither of those movies matched the overwhelming success of the Westernized adaptation of Ringu .

The Ring Two

Released in 2005.

Six months after the events of The Ring comes its 2005 American sequel, The Ring Two. The Ring Two reintroduces director Hideo Nakata to the franchise and finds Rachel and her son Aidan trying to escape the horrors of the cursed tape in their new hometown of Astoria, Oregon. Their peace is short-lived, as the evil spirit of Samara begins to haunt Aidan once again. As Samara desperately tries to possess Aidan's body, Rachel once again has to confront the terrifying curse and save her son.

One wonders what the sequel might have looked like if Verbinksi had returned to the franchise to complete his story.

Unlike the first American remake of The Ring , the sequel was met with mostly negative critical reviews. Gore Verbinski, who directed The Ring , left the franchise due to creative differences, which is what brought Nakata to the project, and one wonders what the sequel might have looked like if Verbinksi had returned to the franchise to complete his story. The Ring 2 opened with a bigger box office than the original, but it fell off after that and ended up making much less money overall, with only $164 million compared to the $249.3 million The Ring made (via Box Office Mojo ) .

Released In 2012

Loosely inspired by Koji Suzuku's S , Sadako 3D jumps into The Ring franchise as a sequel to 1998's Rasen . Set in 2012, Sadako 3D takes the supernatural curse from VHS to digital as Sadako begins terrorizing people across the internet. The catch is, instead of viewers of the haunted footage being killed by a ghost, the curse forces people to die by suicide . In addition to expanding on the lore of the curse, Sadako 3D gives The Ring a modern-day facelift, incorporating the internet and digital technology into its iconic supernatural story.

This movie was based on his novel S , which takes place 25 years after the events of Spira.

This Japanese Ring movie chose to go back on the original story idea from Ringu 2 and once again based its story on one by Koji Suzuki. This movie was based on his novel S , which takes place 25 years after the events of Spiral (the second book in his Ring series of novels). The novel and movie came out in th same year, showing that Suzuki and the studio were working hand in hand during this time. The movie let down many fans of the original Japanese Ring movies, as it only has an audience score of 16% on Rotten Tomatoes.

2002’s The Ring by Gore Verbinski is a masterpiece of horror cinema that launched the trend for American reboots of foreign horror.

Sadako 3D 2

Released in 2013.

Set five years after Sadako 3D , the 2013 movie Sadako 3D 2 enters The Ring's timeline as a continuation of the Rasen storyline . Sadako 3D 2 further explores the evolution of Sadako's curse in the digital era, providing new perspectives on her origins and motivations. The film entangles a new group of characters in its supernatural world, including a university professor, a detective, and a young woman with supernatural abilities. Together, they uncover the secrets of Sadako's curse and find a way to put her spirit to rest.

Despite the trilogy tease though, Sadako 3D 2 completely failed to find its audience.

The movie also hints that the spirit of Sadako lives on in a new young child, and the horrors will continue. Despite the trilogy tease though, Sadako 3D 2 completely failed to find its audience. The audience score on Rotten Tomatoes for Sadako 3D 2 is an extremely low 6%, as many fans called it a disappointing followup to an already below-average relaunch of The Ring franchise. Thanks to the poor reception, this ended this Sadako version of The Ring movies, in order, for nine years before the studio tried to resurrect it.

Sadako vs Kayako

Released in 2016, sadako vs. kayako.

The timeline in The Ring takes a detour with the introduction of 2016's J-horror crossover Sadako vs Kayako . As a standalone film, Sadako vs Kayako opens the door to another timeline where J-horror classics The Ring and The Grudge co-exist. What started off as an April Fool's gag was brought to life due to its high demand (via Anime News Network ) , depicting a supernatural face-off against J-horror icons Sadako and Kayako, resulting in a mash-up of sinister proportions.

Sadako vs. Kayako was a love letter to fans meant to entertain with plenty of in-jokes.

In much the same manner as Freddy Vs. Jason , which added in touches for fans of both A Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th movie franchises, the big test with this movie was to please fans of both The Ring and The Grudge franchises. Since the entire purpose of the movie was not to scare, like the original films in each series, Sadako vs. Kayako was a love letter to fans meant to entertain with plenty of in-jokes.

It succeeded to an extent, as its 48% rating on Rotten Tomatoes was better than later sequels in both franchises.

Released In 2017

Next in the timeline is the third installment to the American remake, 2017's Rings . Rings takes the story to 2015, where a girl named Julia begins investigating a mysterious tape that has been influencing her boyfriend Holt's distant behavior. As Julia dives deeper, she discovers the existence of a " movie within a movie ," an additional cursed video that gives viewers seven days to pass it along to avoid death. Julia and Holt race to uncover the origins of this new curse, which has been linked to Samara's past, quickly realizing that Samara's powers extend beyond the cursed videotape.

Rings was nowhere near as successful as either of the other American Ring movies, only making $83.1 million at the box-office.

It had been 12 years since The Ring Two, and Rings was meant to re-launch the American version of the franchise. The studio also made the smart decision to return to Koji Suzuki's novels, as this movie adapted his actual Ring sequel novel, Spiral . However, Rings was nowhere near as successful as either of the other American Ring movies, only making $83.1 million at the box-office, although that was a minor success based on its $25 million budget. It also received mostly negative reviews and that ended the American version's relaunch.

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Released in 2019

Based on Koji Suzuki's Tide , Sadako is the next entry in The Ring franchise and is considered a direct sequel to Ringu 2 . Helmed by the great Hideo Nakata, Sadako's upgraded visuals introduce a refreshing contemporary look to the franchise. It follows psychologist Mayu Akikawa, who discovers that the legendary cursed video has resurfaced, and is spreading a new wave of fear and death throughout Japan. Sadako evolves the lore of Ringu , introducing a reincarnated version of Sadako while exploring the curse's adaptation into the digital age.

The studio also went all out on the promotions, licensing a manga tie-in series to go along with this release.

While it shares a similar name to the precious Sadako movies, this ignored both of them and took the franchise back to the start , allowing a new sequel to Ringu 2 , making it the official third movie in that timeline. The studio also went all out on the promotions, licensing a manga tie-in series to go along with this release. The movie received mostly poor critical reviews, as did most of the series, but it showed that the studio at least wanted to modernize the classic ghostly tale for a new generation, even though it hadn't reached that level yet.

Released In 2022

The last entry of The Ring's franchise is 2022's Sadako DX . Continuing Rasen's storyline, Sadako DX is considered a sequel to 2013's Sadako 3D 2 , though it has little to do with the characters or plot. Sadako DX takes a break from its renowned supernatural horror and dives into its funny side, with over-the-top performances and parodies of Gen Z culture that make the movie unintentionally funny. In addition to its quirky new cast and tone, Sadako DX refreshes the rules of the curse, shortening the time span from 7 days to 24 hours.

With the comedy added to the story, Sadako DX really felt like something special.

Since Sadako didn't reignite the franchise in 2019 as a sequel to Ringu 2 , the studio went back to the Rasen timeline and tried again three years later. With the comedy added to the story, Sadako DX really felt like something special. What pulled it down somewhat was the lackluster effects work, as the humor was at the forefront, and it seemed the filmmakers let up a little on the gore and horror effects. Regardless, it received a mixed reception, and so far the timeline of The Ring movies stops here.

• The Ring (2002)

The Correct Order To Watch The Ring Franchise

K oji Suzuki's novel "Ring" was first published in 1991, and no one could have guessed that the simple, tech-based ghost story would spawn a decades-long, worldwide media franchise that incorporates multiple movies, crossovers, comics, audio dramas, and video games. If one does a deep dive into the entire "Ring" series, one will uncover a massively complicated mythos that repeatedly peels back layers of reality to reveal an onion-like media metafiction that Marshall McLuhan would be proud of.

The premise of "Ring" is wicked and fun, and would have been all the more terrifying in 1991 when VHS was still in vogue. In the book, an investigative reporter named Asakawa finds a cursed video cassette of a surreal, 20-minute short film. At the end of the video, a captain informs him that he has seven days to live. Asakawa takes the threat seriously, as several teenage girls who watched the video have already died. Asakawa investigates the source of the video and finds it is connected to a dead girl named Sadako, who might have created it via psychic projection (and yes,  pyschic photography is a thing). The images of the video reveal what Sadako went through before she died, and it seems her plight was bleak. Now she haunts the world in VHS form.

Suzuki wrote five sequels to "Ring," and it was adapted into a series of successful comic books starting in 1996. Since 1995, there have been 14 feature films based on the book. There were two "Ring" TV shows in 1999 which served as "final chapters," although the most recent "Ring" film was released in 2022. DreamWorks famously remade "Ring" as "The Ring" in 2002 , and that film spawned two English-language sequels and a short.

Let's trace the complex series.

Read more: The 95 Best Horror Movies Ever

The Release Order

In the order of their release (the "correct" order, if you will), here are all the films, shorts, and TV shows in the "Ring" franchise (all of which are Japanese unless otherwise marked): 

• "Ring: Kanzenban" (1995) -- TV movie
• "Ring" (1998) -- feature
• "Rasen" a.k.a. "Spiral" (1998) -- feature
• "Ring: The Final Chapter" (1999) - -TV series
• "Ring 2" (1999) -- feature
• "The Ring Virus" (1999) -- feature, Korean
• "Rasen" a.k.a. "Spiral" (1999) -- TV series
• "Ring 0: Birthday" (2000) -- feature
• "The Ring" (2002) -- feature, American
• "Rings" (2005) -- short, American
• "The Ring Two" (2005) -- feature, American
• "Sadako 3D" (2012) -- feature
• "Sadako 3D 2" (2015) -- feature
• "Sadako vs. Kayako" (2016) -- feature
• "Rings" (2017) -- feature, American
• "Sadako" (2019) -- feature
• "Sadako DX" (2022) -- feature

The above list does not contain the eight manga books based on "Ring," nor does it include the video games "The Ring: Terror's Realm" and "The Ring: Infinity," both released in 2000.

The 2016 film "Sadako vs. Kayako" is a crossover with the "Ju-on" film series, another haunting story that rose to prominence at the same time as "Ring." Like "The Ring," "Ju-on," aka "The Grudge," has spawned a massive media franchise unto itself. The "Ju-on" series sports six novels, 12 movies, two shorts, a TV series, and a video game. It was appropriate that Sadako and Kayako should meet and do a psychic battle; it's a match-up to rival Freddy and Jason . If one wants to be truly exhaustive about it, a complete list of all the "Ring" and "Grudge" media will be included below.

"The Ring Virus" is a Korean remake of the 1998 original wherein Samara was renamed Eun-Suh.

In the Japanese books and Korean remake, Sadako is intersex. In the Japanese and American films, she is female.

Ring-a-Ding-Ding

The three American features (and 2005 short film) all share a unique continuity wherein Asakawa was renamed Rachel Keller and played by actor Naomi Watts. Sadako was renamed Samara. The inaugural myth about a haunted VHS cassette remains intact. The 2002 film, directed by Gore Verbinski, was a massive hit and served to introduce American audiences to the "Ring" franchise in earnest. The 2005 short took place in between "The Ring" and "The Ring Two," while the 2017 feature took place many years later.

The six "Ring" novels are pretty wild, and one of them -- 1998's "Loop" -- reveals that the first two novels were a mere Virtual Reality simulation. The fourth book, "Birthday," is a collection of short stories set throughout the "Ring" continuity, while the fifth book, "S," takes place 25 years after book #2, 1995's "Spiral." The sixth and final book, 2013's "Tide," is a sequel to "Loop" and deals more with the VR world.

As mentioned above, "Ring" crossed over with "The Grudge," implying a shared ghostly universe. Here is the complete master list of all the "Ring" and "Grudge" movies stacked together:

• "Scratch 1: Katasumi" (1998) -- short
• "4444444444" (1998) -- short
• "Ring: The Final Chapter" (1999) -- TV series
• "Ju-On: The Curse" (2000) -- feature
• "Ju-On: The Curse 2" (2000) -- feature
• "Ju-On: The Grudge" (2002) -- feature
• "Ju-On: The Grudge 2" (2003) -- feature
• "The Grudge" (2004) -- feature, American
• "Tales from the Grudge" (2006) -- shorts collection, American
• "The Grudge 2" (2006) -- feature, American
• "The Grudge 3" (2009) -- feature, American
• "Ju-On: White Ghost" (2009) -- shorts collection
• "Ju-On: Black Ghost" (2009) -- shorts collection
• "Sadako 3D 2" (2013) -- feature
• "Ju-On: The Beginning of the End" (2014) -- feature
• "Ju-On: The Final Curse" (2015) -- feature
• "The Grudge" (2020) -- feature, American
• "Ju-On: Origins" (2020) -- TV series

That's 33 titles, all told. Watch as many of them on VHS as you can. 

Read the original article on SlashFilm

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The Ring Parent Guide

Be careful what you watch! After popping a video tape into her VCR player, Katie (Amber Tamblyn) receives a a mysterious phone call telling her she has only seven days to live. A week later her Aunt (Naomi Watts) is asked to investigate the young girl's sudden death.

Release date October 1, 2002

Run Time: 115 minutes

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The guide to our grades, parent movie review by rod gustafson.

You won’t want to be dawdling at the concession stand because The Ring is quick to turn off the lights and introduce its terror.

We recognize the first sure sign of trouble: two attractive teen girls in short skirts are left alone in a rambling house. Katie (Amber Tamblyn) tells Becca (Rachael Bella) about a videocassette she watched a week earlier. After viewing it, her phone rang with a message announcing she had only seven days to live. Sure enough, the creepy scene concludes with Katie literally frightened to death (we see her grotesquely disfigured face), while Becca is left insane.

Desperate to find answers before her time expires, Rachel enlists the help of her video-techie friend Aidan (David Dorfman), but knows he and her son Noah (Martin Henderson) both risk becoming part of The Ring .

There is no scarcity of scare-factor in this film, which transforms mundane things like TV static into heart-pounding cues. Confining camera angles, muted color palettes, and a few items from the traditional thriller toolbox are precisely blended to make the images and sounds more memorable than the few plot holes and unanswered questions. Yet those very images, which include a suicidal bathtub electrocution and a woman jumping from a cliff, also have the potential to fuel nightmares in young audiences for weeks to come.

Certainly capable of maintaining a tight grip on your popcorn bucket, The Ring’s sparse profanities (including one sexual expletive) and near lack of sexual content may make this a choice for older teens and adults looking for a gloomy ghost story, but falls short of ringing our approval for family entertainment.

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Rod Gustafson

The ring parents' guide.

In this movie, “everyday” things become frightening - like static on a television. How does transforming the ordinary into disturbing make horror films more effective?

Death is the central topic in many horror movies - yet they seldom include any conventional spiritual or religious perspectives. Why?

The most recent home video release of The Ring movie is September 10, 2002. Here are some details…

The Ring releases to home video on September 11, 2002. There are no special features included.

Related home video titles:

Movies will often play homage to other films. If you have seen Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window you will recognize the sequence where Rachel waits on her apartment balcony, peering into the windows of her neighbors. (The filmmakers even included a man in a wheelchair with a broken leg!) For other scary flics, check out The Others and The Sixth Sense .

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FILM REVIEW

FILM REVIEW; Don't Touch 'Play'! It Could Be Fatal

By Elvis Mitchell

• Oct. 18, 2002

''Before you die, you see 'The Ring,' '' as the ads for this American remake of a famous Japanese suspense film tell us. With ads like this, the movie has certainly built up a lot of anticipation. But while impressively made, this impassive and cold feature fails, in a spectacular fashion, to deliver the thrills.

The film, which opens nationwide today, is about an urban legend that has come to life: whenever a mysterious, unlabeled videotape is run, its unlucky viewer gets a phone call just after seeing it. The voice on the other end of the phone says simply, ''Seven days.'' It's how long the viewer has to live -- and the corpse looks like something out of a Francis Bacon daydream.

When her niece dies after seeing the tape, Rachel (Naomi Watts), a Seattle reporter, decides to investigate the rumors. And that's when ''The Ring'' begins its downward spiral. She watches the freakout videotape, which looks like a director's cut of ''Closer,'' the video that starred the band Nine Inch Nails, complete with suffering animals, a fly crawling across the screen and static-ridden flash cuts. As music-video effluvia goes, this tape is not even as unnerving as the outfits Lenny Kravitz wears to the VH1 fashion awards.

Much of what follows consists of close-ups of the clues that Rachel, desperate to beat the clock and stay alive, sifts through to solve the mystery. The screen-filling shots of newspaper headlines and photographs chronicling the grisly deaths could be from a different kind of horror movie: ''Night of the Working Dead,'' starring Nancy Drew.

Initially, Ms. Watts, the versatile star of David Lynch's ''Mulholland Drive,'' does a fine job of communicating Rachel's off-putting toughness. Under the best of circumstances, she scares everyone but her son, Aidan (David Dorfman), and based on the dark circles under his eyes and his solemn, old-man's enunciation, he's got problems of his own. But once it becomes clear that tight-jawed anxiety is surprisingly the only note on her piano, the movie feels numbed. Eventually, the phone calls don't even generate the anxiety of telemarketer hits that come during dinnertime.

The director, Gore Verbinski, stages the opening with a tribute to ''Scream,'' which itself was a tribute to ''When a Stranger Calls'' -- the first scam thriller in which every single scare was in the movie's trailer. Perhaps the most puzzling thing about ''The Ring'' is that it seems to assume that horror-movie audiences have no memory.

David Dorfman, with his ''Village of the Damned'' haircut and precocious maturity, seems to have studied at the Haley Joel Osment School of Fine Acting. Though there are a few chilling moments -- one big scene involving a horse on a ferry is spectacular -- everything in ''The Ring'' feels recycled, including the picture's look and tone, which are reminiscent of ''The Blair Witch Project.'' ''Ringu,'' the Japanese original of ''The Ring,'' preceded and probably inspired ''Blair Witch.'' Copies of the director Hideo Nakata's 1997 cult classic have made the underground circuit like the deadly videotape that fills the center of the plot of ''The Ring.''

''Ringu'' felt like an era-defining scare picture: whispers about its imminent remake have been drifting through chat rooms since word of its existence first made it to America. But the real spark came from the ''Closer'' video. And ''Closer,'' the director Mark Romanek's grim, romanticized nightmare, with its well-appointed nihilism -- honey dripped over Buñuel -- was the perfect integration of visuals and the morose showmanship of the Nails leader Trent Reznor.

At least the channeling of ''Ringu'' in ''The Ring'' is reverent. Unfortunately, there are other problems. Mr. Verbinski can assemble a movie like a machine, which worked for the scare comedy ''Mouse Hunt.'' But here, the mechanical assembly simply emphasizes how devoid of feeling the film is. One particular scene is just such a hollow set piece: a mentally handicapped young man pushes himself backward on a carousel while yet another crucial nugget of plot information is delivered. ''The Ring'' is there to be admired instead of to creep you out. There's also much huffing and puffing to add a psychological underpinning to the plot.

Yet after the opening sequence -- well acted by Amber Tamblyn and Rachael Bella as targets of the killer tape -- ''The Ring'' mostly drags along until its climax. In trying to give the movie narrative plausibility, the makers have diluted it. ''Ringu'' doesn't make a great deal of sense either, but instead has a swift ruthlessness that borders on cruelty.

''The Ring'' also rejects the fear-of-girls stain that covered its original. The cinematographer Bojan Bazelli does tone up the bleary-eyed interiors -- the movie's color scheme is ''Exorcist'' green and rotting-plaster white -- but it doesn't make much difference; rather, it just exaggerates the relentless sameness. The Seattle location must have been chosen for its sunless, drizzly skies; there are so many shots of car windows weeping with rain that theaters should pass out squeegees.

This seems to be the season for horror movies that are basically teases -- offering a promise of a good scare and then running away before delivering. ''The Ring'' is just one more in that cycle.

''The Ring'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes violence, blood, animal endangerment and spooky distant rumbling on its soundtrack.

Directed by Gore Verbinski; written by Ehren Kruger, based on the novel by Koji Suzuki and the motion picture by the Hideo Nakata; director of photography, Bojan Bazelli; edited by Craig Wood; music by Hans Zimmer; production designer, Tom Duffield; produced by Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald; released by DreamWorks Pictures. Running time: 115 minutes. This film is rated PG-13.

WITH: Naomi Watts (Rachel), Martin Henderson (Noah), David Dorfman (Aidan), Brian Cox (Richard Morgan), Jane Alexander (Dr. Grasnik), Lindsay Frost (Ruth), Amber Tamblyn (Katie) and Rachael Bella (Becca).

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‘Rings’ movie review

It starts strong, but 'rings' feels like a worn-out vhs tape.

When Gore Verbinski’s 2002 film The Ring hit theaters, the success of his terrifying adaptation of director Hideo Nakata’s Japanese horror classic spawned a wave of American remakes of “J-horror” films.

At a time when gore ruled the horror genre, the film’s skillful use of slow-building dread and shocking visuals won over professional critics and general audiences alike, and led to films such as The Grudge , Pulse , and One Missed Call similarly mining the Japanese horror genre. The performance of The Ring even led to Nakata directing the 2005 sequel, The Ring Two , which sadly – like many of the American remakes that preceded it – fell short of capturing the same spooky lightning in a bottle as The Ring.

Now, 12 years later, the franchise has found its way back to theaters with director F. Javier Gutiérrez’s Rings , a film that runs the supernatural premise of The Ring through the filter of modern-day technology, and attempts to rekindle the creepy magic that made the 2002 film such a hit.

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After starting out fresh, Rings ends up doing more of the same schtick we’ve seen before.

In theory, it’s a clever approach to refreshing the material, so it comes as a bit of a disappointment that the film falls back on the laziest tropes of the genre – and the franchise – so quickly and so frequently.

Set 13 years after the events of The Ring Two , Rings casts Italian model Matilda Lutz and The 5 th Wave actor Alex Roe as a teenage couple who get caught up in the deadly curse of the haunted video cassette – which has now gone digital – that dooms anyone who watches it to a grisly death in seven days. Roe’s character is a student at a local college where a professor played by The Big Bang Theory actor Johnny Galecki is conducting a secret, high-tech experiment with the video in order to explore the nature of the human soul. As one might expect, the project takes an unfortunate turn, and the young couple soon find themselves desperately tracking down information about the mysterious girl, Samara (played by contortionist Bonnie Morgan), at the heart of the video’s curse.

The idea to bring the old-school device at the heart of the original film – a cursed VHS cassette – into today’s world of smartphones, digital compression, YouTube, and video calls is intriguing, to say the least. And with more than a dozen years of gruesome history behind the curse, it makes sense that someone along the way would figure out a way to study it while somehow avoiding the deadly outcome that caught up with past victims.

In that respect, Rings shows some promise early on. The goals of the experiment run by Galecki’s character remain frustratingly ill-defined, but the system he develops for avoiding the curse suggests that he’s far from the typical, naïve victim, and the promise of seeing how one could use all of that technology to deconstruct the curse is one of the movie’s most compelling story angles.

Unfortunately, it’s a short-lived plot point. And just as things are at their most interesting, The Ring quickly devolves into a rehash of the two films that preceded it.

Both The Ring and The Ring Two focused their mysteries on the tragic life of Samara, the murdered girl who repeatedly crawls out of her well to seal the demise of anyone who watches her cursed video. After starting out fresh, Rings ends up doing more of the same stick we’ve seen before, opting to once again send its protagonists on a relatively technology-light hunt for clues about Samara’s early years in the hope of ending the curse.

Just another chronicle of dumb teenagers making bad decisions.

It’s a narrative decision that feels all too familiar at this point, and even a bit strange, given how much potential there was in the initial, high-tech story angle.

Rings also changes gears from the previous films by aging down its cast and effectively turning the film into just another chronicle of dumb teenagers making bad decisions.

This decision is almost as disappointing as the missed narrative opportunity with modern technology, as both the 2002 film and its sequel did a respectable job of making Naomi Watts’ protagonist seem fairly intelligent and capable. Lutz and Roe’s characters, in comparison, tend to be the sort who see nothing wrong with throwing open every foreboding door they come across and splitting up in creepy buildings for no good reason.

Although Lutz and Roe fall into traditional roles in the film, Galecki is a standout in an otherwise forgettable cast. Unfortunately, the film shortchanges the elements of the story dealing with his character’s experiment, giving the audience frustratingly little exposure to his character.

Also playing a memorable part in the film is Daredevil actor Vincent D’Onofrio, who’s become fascinating to watch in just about any role lately. As the blind caretaker of a cemetery Lutz and Roe’s characters encounter, D’Onofrio plays a supporting role that’s entertaining for the brief amount of time he spends on screen. His part feels like a cameo, but he plays it like a much larger role.

By far the weakest entry in the series so far, Rings feels like a let-down all around, lacking the scare factor of the original – and its sequel – and neglecting to make up for it by bringing something fresh and innovative to the franchise. The characters all feel too cookie-cutter at times, doing everything they shouldn’t do in the grand tradition of forgettable horror films. Even Samara herself seems to have lost a step in the scare game, and falls short of prompting the sort of pants-wetting response that her early appearances in the franchise provoked so easily.

With how quickly it falls back on old tricks, Rings is content to coast along on its reputation instead of surprise its audience, and the end result is a movie that feels far too generic than it should be with its unique premise.

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It should come as no surprise that this year's hit rom-com Anyone But You has a stranglehold on the top slot of the list of the most popular movies on Netflix. But it is somewhat surprising to see Zack Snyder's Rebel Moon – Part Two: The Scargiver completely disappear from the list. That's going to make Rebel Moon – Part Three very unlikely to happen, and it may even discourage Netflix from committing extremely high budgets to its original sci-fi movies.

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Prime Video lost a handful of movies at the end of April, and Paul Thomas Anderson's Licorice Pizza is only sticking around through the end of the weekend. But everything else on our list of the best movies on Amazon Prime Video right now is still available. Just keep reading, and you can make plans to watch any of the films that you want to see this month.

Unless you're super dialed in to the latest entertainment news every day of the week, it's really easy to miss a new trailer for your favorite movie or TV show. That's why we're bringing together the best movie and TV show trailers of the week of May 3 in one place. All you really have to do now is scroll down and hit play.

Just releasing a new trailer isn't enough to get it on our roundup. We believe that the best trailers are the ones that don't give away too much about the story, while also building up a sense of excitement for the film or TV series. Most of all, we still want to be surprised when we actually watch the programing in question. Keep this in mind as we go over this week's trailers. From season 3

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[4K Ultra HD Review] The Ring Collection; Now Available From Scream Factory

Director(s): Gore Verbinski, Hideo Nakata, F. Javier Gutiérrez

Cast: Naomi Watts, David Dorfman, Matilda Lutz

Release Date: March 19, 2024

A Review By: Kevin Lovell

Disc Rating: 8.5/10

THE RING This cinematic thrill ride will keep you on the edge of your seat, from the stunning opening to the astonishing conclusion! It begins as just another urban legend – the whispered tale of a nightmarish videotape that causes anyone who watches it to die seven days later. But when four teenagers all meet with mysterious deaths exactly one week after watching just such a tape, investigative reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts, Mulholland Drive) tracks down the video … and watches it. Now, the legend is coming true, the clock is ticking, and Rachel has just seven days to unravel the mystery of The Ring.

THE RING TWO – INCLUDES BOTH THEATRICAL & UNRATED CUTS A terrifying legacy haunts a single mother in this sequel to the frightening box-office hit, The Ring. Hoping to leave their terrifying experiences in Seattle behind them, Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) and her son, Aidan (David Dorfman, Zombie Roadkill), move to the small town of Astoria, Oregon. When Rachel learns of an unexplained murder which occurred after a teenager watched a strange videotape with his girlfriend, she suspects her past is following her.

RINGS Discover the terrifying new chapter in the groundbreaking Ring franchise. When a radical college professor (Johnny Galecki, The Big Bang Theory) finds the mysterious video rumored to kill viewers seven days after watching it, he enlists his students in a dangerous experiment to uncover the secrets behind the Samara legend. When the deadly video goes viral, they must figure out a way to break the curse and defeat Samara before her evil is unleashed upon the world. But how do you stop her when she’s everywhere?

Please Note: Shout! Studios/Scream Factory provided me with a free copy of the 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray I reviewed in this Post. The opinions I share are my own.

Gather up those closest to you, get comfortable and prepare to get creeped out once again with all three American films in ‘The Ring’ series. First, join a reporter named Rachel in ‘The Ring’ who gets caught up in Samara’s deadly vengeance along with her son as she begins to investigate a mysterious tape after her relative mysteriously dies and rumors from other teens blame a cursed videocassette. Upon delving into the mysteries and rumors surrounding the tape, Rachel quickly finds herself fully invested once she watches and begins to experience the terror herself. Then, rejoin Rachel and her son once again in ‘The Ring Two’ as they try to move on from the terror of the tape that shook up their lives only to have it show up at their new location. Before long her son starts experiencing weird moments which lead her to determine that Samara is trying to take over her child. Lastly, we join a new group of individuals in ‘Rings’ as the cursed tape becomes a viral phenomenon when a college professor becomes obsessed with its hidden secrets, eventually leading to one young woman who becomes oddly connected to Samara’s secrets and can’t resist hunting for the truth behind it.

Based upon the popular Japanese horror film ‘Ringu’, ‘The Ring’ offered American audiences their own take on the cursed ghost girl tale that ignited the box office and had many viewers praising its creepy approach and stylish aura, complemented by a solid cast and various other elements that all just click. The well-received film was followed shortly thereafter by ‘The Ring Two’ which brought back the two leads from its predecessor and delivers a similar but also in many ways notably different follow-up that may not have been quite as impressive but still held up well and kept fans intrigued. Unfortunately, the two were followed years later by ‘Rings’ which was definitely not the brightest moment for the series (and effectively ended its popularity, at least for the time being) and ended up being an almost painfully bad sequel with very few connections to the previous films.

While each of the franchise’s installments have their charms (primarily the first two, although there are a couple rewarding moments in the third at least) its history and dedicated fan base are impressive in their own right and even as someone who had previously seen each film at one time or another, they’re still quite fun to revisit, especially in the outstanding quality presented in this 4K collection from Shout. Perhaps the only disappointing element here is that the unrated cut of the sequel isn’t included in 4K, but it is at least featured on the Blu-ray disc; making this a perfect collection featuring all three films in stellar quality for fans to add to their collection at last.

Scream Factory brings home all three films in the American ‘The Ring’ series in one collectible set, featuring all three in full Ultra High Definition with Dolby Vision (and HDR-10) and while some of the films in this series are undeniably superior to others, I can say that all of these new 4K presentations look pretty wonderful in their own right and look superior to any other previous home video releases available. The great new UHD presentations are nicely boosted by multichannel DTS-HD MA soundtracks on each which don’t disappoint, in addition to a nice offering of bonus content including some nice, brand new extras along with a number of previously released bonus goodies as well. All three films come in their own sturdy cases that include both the 4K UHD and Blu-ray discs within; while all three of these individual cases are packed inside of a glossy and nicely sturdy side-slip box and fans should be very satisfied with the nice, sturdy and collectible packaging as a whole. If you’re a fan of the franchise that’s fully 4K capable and would like to own the entire series in the format, then this new 6-disc set from Scream Factory should be right up your alley and is recommended.

The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release of ‘The Ring Collection’ features a full 2160p Ultra High Definition presentation with Dolby Vision and HDR-10 on all three films (The Ring, The Ring Two, Rings) presented in their original 1.85:1 Aspect Ratio. The video presentations are each sourced from new 4K transfers, with notes below regarding each:

‘The Ring’ features a new 4K Scan Of The Original Camera Negative Supervised And Approved By Gore Verbinski, while ‘The Ring Two’ features a new 4K Scan Of The Original Camera Negative (although only the Theatrical Version is included in 4K, with the Unrated available on the Blu-ray) and ‘Rings’ just notes that it features a new 4K Master.

All three films look quite spectacular here and deliver sharp, clean and richly detailed presentations from start to finish that are absent of any notable issues or glitches to be uncovered along the way. The first film retains plenty of grain and other artifacts representative of its source and delivers a splendidly filmic and gorgeous presentation throughout, while both of the sequels look quite marvelous in their own right. Each film shows impressive detail and clarity across the board, noticeable on character faces and specifics, along with indoor rooms and outdoor landscapes and surroundings, in addition to everything else along the way. Each film’s solid 4K presentation is only further complemented by Dolby Vision HDR which shows nice improvement in the greens and other colors on display while also allowing faces and various other elements to look more realistic and faithful in their display; all boosted by deep, clean and very nice black levels. Overall, these are largely fantastic Ultra High Definition presentations for the films that never falter or disappoint and they should have fans of the series thrilled.

The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release features a 5.1 channel DTS-HD Master Audio soundtrack for ‘The Ring’ and ‘The Ring Two’, while ‘Rings’ features a 7.1 DTS-HD MA soundtrack. All of these multichannel soundtracks hold up nicely and offer crisp, clean and immersive audio presentations throughout. They repeatedly take advantage of all available channels in order to send some music, creepy sound effects, vehicle and nature activity, along with dripping water, crowd chatter and plenty more consistently whipping throughout the various speakers at every logical opportunity, while always making certain that any dialogue or other audio elements that may be occurring simultaneously remain clean, sharp and fully audible at all times. Overall these are very nice DTS-HD MA soundtracks that may not be wildly hard hitting and aggressive like some soundtracks these days but still do their job quite well and shouldn’t disappoint.

SPECIAL FEATURES:

The 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray release of ‘The Ring Collection’ includes a nice helping of bonus content with a collection of extras for each film. I’ve broken down the extras by disc below for simplicity and easier navigation; please note that the entirety of extras are featured on the Blu-ray discs and not the 4K discs with the exception of the Theatrical commentary on ‘The Ring Two’ which is featured on both discs.

The Blu-ray disc for ‘The Ring’ includes a new retrospective Feature exploring the legacy and reception of the series in ‘Ghost Girl Gone Global’ (running approximately 92 minutes in length), along with the ‘Rings’ short film (running approximately 17 minutes) and a collection of eerie footage in ‘Don’t Watch This’ (approximately 15 minutes). Also included on the disc are ‘The Origin of Terror’ (4 minutes), ‘Cast & Filmmaker Interviews’ (8 minutes) and the film’s ‘Theatrical Trailer’ (2 minutes).

The Blu-ray disc for ‘The Ring Two’ features an ‘Audio Commentary with Film Critics Emily Higgins and Billy Dunham’ (only available on the Theatrical Cut, and additionally included on the 4K disc). Also included is the ‘Rings’ short film once again (17 minutes), in addition to a collection of ‘Deleted Scenes’ from the film (approximately 18 minutes altogether). A handful of Behind the Scenes Featurettes and promotional videos are also featured including ‘Fear on Film: Special Effects’ (6 minutes), ‘Faces of Fear: The Phenomenon’ (6 minutes), ‘Samara: From Eye to Icon’ (6 minutes), ‘The Power of Symbols’ (5 minutes) and ‘The making of The Ring Two’ (13 minutes). The film’s ‘Theatrical Trailer’ (90 seconds) is also included.

The Blu-ray disc for ‘Rings’ includes a collection of ‘Deleted/Extended/Alternate Scenes’ from the movie (running approximately 19 minutes in length altogether), in addition to a few behind the scenes Featurettes including ‘Terror Comes Full Circle’ (running approximately 13 minutes), ‘Resurrecting the Dead: Bringing Samara Back’ (approximately 9 minutes), and ‘Scary Scenes’ (7 minutes).

*Please note that the above images are taken from the Remastered Blu-Ray discs included in the release and resized. They do not represent the quality of the 4K Ultra HD discs themselves and will additionally suffer quality loss as a result of .jpg compression. Larger versions of each image can be viewed by clicking on the image. All images and content included on this release are the property of their respective owners.

‘The Ring Collection’ is Now Available to Own in a 6-Disc 4K Ultra HD/Blu-ray Box Set from Scream Factory!

You can purchase your copy of ‘The Ring Collection’ in 4K UHD on Amazon HERE or purchase it directly from Shout HERE !

*Screen-Connections.com is an Amazon Associate that earns from qualifying purchases

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Movies | Column: An ode to failure: Some classic movies…

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Movies | column: an ode to failure: some classic movies were flops when they first came out.

This spring, a century ago, Buster Keaton’s “Sherlock, Jr.” opened in theaters. Keaton, a huge success in vaudeville and one of a handful of silent film pioneers touched by the gods of inspiration, already had built an eager audience for his fearless, outlandish stunt work, bone-dry wit, pinpoint comic timing and peculiarly American melancholy. He directed “Sherlock, Jr.” as well as starred in it, as well as breaking his neck, literally, for it.

Keaton took his time filming — four months on this project — and was injured filming a scene with a railway water spout. Some chilly preview screenings garnered few laughs, so Keaton cut his comedy down to 45 minutes, ruthlessly. Still, business was mild; 1924 audiences preferred Harold Lloyd’s comedies “Girl Shy” and “Hot Water.” While “Sherlock, Jr.” didn’t cost enough to be an omen of creative independence doom, the way Keaton’s “The General” was two years later, Keaton biographer Marion Meade called it the star’s first conspicuous disappointment in 25 years of show business. He was 28.

This is the thing about money: Enough time goes by, and very few money matters matter anymore. A century later “Sherlock Jr.” has ascended to the pantheon. It’s a dreamy masterpiece, connecting the world of dreams to the expressive realms of cinema. There are moments in it that defy gravity, bamboozle the eye, invent and perfect new ways of seeing and getting a laugh, all in the same second. The trade publication Variety called it “as funny as a hospital operating room.” More recently, two different children in my life attended Facets summer camp, and watching “Sherlock, Jr.” for the first time, they came to the same conclusion on different days in different summers: It’s great. Magic.

Sometimes the audience simply is not in the mood. Post-World War II America in 1946 was not in the mood for “It’s a Wonderful Life.” That movie lost money and felt like Frank Capra’s fade-out. He made more pictures, but not many, decades after his astonishing string of shrewd, heart-massaging hits in the late silent era and 1930s Hollywood. But endless reruns in the 1950s, thanks to the newer-fangled medium of television, bred familiarity with “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Now it sells out the Music Box Theatre every Christmas.

The roster of economic failures considered by many to be classics of their genre, or genre-defying singularities, has only gotten longer with pandemic-accelerated viewing habits and a desperate industry hellbent on making theatrical exhibition as short-lived as possible. The older titles are easiest to call out: “Duck Soup.” Too mordant for the Depression, reborn on college campuses in the ’60s and rep houses in the ’70s. “Bringing Up Baby.” “The Rules of the Game.” Audiences didn’t like the meticulous artifice of the former, and Jean Renoir’s latter seemed merely cryptic in its tone. Now it is a key film, period.

Newer stuff: So many tough, sour, mud-in-your-eye examinations of dark American forces, especially in the media, couldn’t get arrested in the 1950s. “Ace in the Hole.” “A Face in the Crowd.” “Sweet Smell of Success.” Now they look like bulletins from the very near future, not the past.

Time will tell on the newer new stack of great or near-great economic disappointments. “Tár.” “Killers of the Flower Moon.” Half of the movies made by Paul Thomas Anderson, at least half of which are plainly the stuff of eccentric, rewardingly slippery classics.

So much conspires against any kind of greatness in movies, especially the ones that seem extraordinarily populist today. At the time few in Hollywood thought there wasn’t any money to be made with 1946’s “The Best Years of Our Lives.” Was this what postwar audiences craved? No, they said, whoever the “theys” were. Too depressing. Too topical. Too skeptical about the challenges facing millions of servicemen coming home, mirrored by the characters in director William Wyler’s powerful drama.

It was the biggest hit, as it turned out, since “Gone with the Wind.” And as many have pointed out, including Glenn Frankel in his fine book “High Noon: The Hollywood Blacklist and the Making of an American Classic,” a movie even mildly questioning Main Street America’s treatment of returning veterans would likely never have been made a few short years later, in the early 1950s Red Menace heyday.

Sometimes it’s timing; sometimes a classic is just too something , the way Orson Welles’ “Citizen Kane” and “The Magnificent Ambersons” and so tragically many more from Welles, fought to simply get made, and weren’t Hollywood movies anyway, most of them. And now we revisit them and find them endlessly what they always were: marvels of instability and loss and, yes, genius.

Consider this an ode to failures in name only. And a reminder of the triumph of time, in perpetuity.

Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.

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‘the lord of the rings’ trilogy returns to theaters in extended 4k uhd.

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Peter Jackson’s Oscar-winning The Lord of the Rings: Extended Edition trilogy is returning to theaters in gloriously remastered 4K UHD this summer. Warner Bros. Discovery is rereleasing the films with Fathom Events, at certain AMC, Regal, and Cinemark Theaters around North America.

Andy Serkis stars in "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy

The Fellowship of the Rings , the 2001 film that launched the adaptation franchise, will screen on Saturday, June 8th. Then on Sunday, June 9th, comes the sequel The Two Towers . The final chapter Return of the King screens Monday June 10th.

The trilogy re-release comes ahead of this year’s Christmas season theatrical release of the anime film The Lord of the Rings: The War Of The Rohirrim . The anime will be considered canonical within Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy and The Hobbit trilogy, along with the ongoing Amazon Prime live-action series The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power .

Lord of the Box Office

The Lord of the Rings original trilogy films combined for a massive $2.93 billion in global box office in their previous releases. These remastered and extended cuts have never been seen in theaters before, however. Besides the success of the original three films, there is the added benefit of the tie-in The Hobbit prequel trilogy and it’s additional $2.9 billion in the franchise mountain of gold, bringing the total series box office cume to a staggering $5.8 billion across six films from 2001 to 2014.

That’s a nearly $1 billion grossing film almost every other year for 14 years, a spectacular achievement dwarfed only by the grander achievement of the filmmaking itself, taking more than half a decade in production on all three films simultaneously .

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Don’t expect any such impressive numbers with this re-releases, of course. Each film gets only a single day in theaters, and only in participating theaters at that (a few hundred in total). I’m merely noting the films have a tremendous pedigree and are widely known to be iconic films worthy of big-screen treatment and viewing.

For perspective, the 2020 re-release of The Fellowship of the Rings took just under $600,000, and the 2021 release of both The Two Towers and The Return of the King combined for about $800,000. But the 20th anniversary re-release of The Return of the King last year scored another $1.1 million. So all told, The Lord of the Rings trilogy’s most recent attempts at re-release grossed a total of roughly $2.5 million.

These numbers exclude the earlier re-releases for the films, which combined for $2.3 million when all three films briefly returned to theaters in 20211. And it’s worth noting that The Fellowship of the Rings: Extended Edition did in fact get a theatrical release in 2003, taking $1.4 million.

While it won’t move the box office needle much, the re-release is a nice promotional strategy that earns free media publicity and some box office dollars to boot. With such an otherwise sluggish year ahead, audiences eager for meatier viewing might just show up in solid numbers for the per-screen box office count.

Revolutionary Filmmaking and VFX

The Lord of the Rings was already magnificent and met with both critical and audience acclaim, as well as winning Oscars for categories including Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, Best Visual Effects, Best Makeup, Best Original Score, Best Cinematography, Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design, and Best Original Score.

However, the Extended Editions are now widely considered the definitive viewing choice among fans and cinephiles. Seeing The Lord of the Rings: Extended Editions in 4K UHD on home entertainment already drives home just how revolutionary and game-changing the films and their production really were, so imagine the impact when you see them on the big screen again in this fuller, intensified vision.

Weta Digital’s mind-blowing visual effects hold up perfectly today, and watching the remastered extended cuts on the big screen won’t remotely suffer at all from comparisons to current big-budget visual effects productions.

Indeed, Weta’s work on The Lord of the Rings , like their equally brilliant work on the Planet of the Apes films , stand alongside James Cameron’s Avatar as the standard bearers for modern mo-cap and immersive CGI world-building. The 4K UHD remastering further accentuates how much detail and realism went into every frame.

In a remarkable ensemble cast, Andy Serkis’ stands out for his nuanced, tragic performance as Gollum. And the accompanying motion-capture remain one of the greatest examples of mo-cap and CGI character performance in cinema, alongside Serkis’ lead performance work with Weta in the Planet of the Apes reboot films.

Few live-action characters live up to the emotional weight and dramatic performances Serkis delivers, and it remains a glaring oversight that the Academy Awards overlooked the actor’s revolutionary performances in these films.

The Lord of the Rings franchise was the definition of immersive world-building, of blockbuster genre adaptation, of the dawn of a new era in cinematic visual effects and what would be possible in storytelling. Audiences and fans are lucky for the chance to return to Middle Earth in glorious and revitalized style.

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The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim

The untold story behind Helm's Deep, hundreds of years before the fateful war, telling the life and bloodsoaked times of its founder, Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan. The untold story behind Helm's Deep, hundreds of years before the fateful war, telling the life and bloodsoaked times of its founder, Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan. The untold story behind Helm's Deep, hundreds of years before the fateful war, telling the life and bloodsoaked times of its founder, Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan.

• Kenji Kamiyama
• Jeffrey Addiss
• Phoebe Gittins
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• Miranda Otto
• Michael Wildman

• Helm Hammerhand

• Fréaláf Hildeson
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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 10 minutes
• Dolby Atmos
• Dolby Digital
• IMAX 6-Track

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Jay leno tells jerry seinfeld that ‘unfrosted’ is “exactly what america needs right now”.

Seinfeld premiered his Pop-Tart comedy alongside Melissa McCarthy and Jim Gaffigan in Los Angeles on Tuesday, with support from the former 'Tonight Show' host.

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Jerry Seinfeld ‘s Pop-Tart comedy Unfrosted debuted in Los Angeles on Tuesday, where its star-studded cast was also joined by a special guest heaping praise on the film.

Jay Leno — alongside wife Mavis — crashed The Hollywood Reporter ‘s red carpet interview with Seinfeld, as he joked, “I’m so sick of these hard-hitting, controversial documentaries. Can’t somebody just make a comedy anymore? Everything is a teachable moment and, ‘Oh I learned this.’ I just want to come and laugh.”

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'unfrosted' writer unpacks the pop-tart movie's buzziest moments -- including that tv reunion, events of the week: 'the fall guy,' 'the idea of you' and more.

"This is exactly what America needs right now," Jay Leno and Jerry Seinfeld share a moment on the #Unfrosted carpet pic.twitter.com/WTtnJsulBo — The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) May 1, 2024

The Netflix film follows a fierce corporate race between Kellogg’s and Post in 1963, as they compete to create a revolutionary new pastry that would become the Pop-Tart. It marks Seinfeld’s directorial debut and stars him alongside Melissa McCarthy, Jim Gaffigan, Hugh Grant, Amy Schumer, Max Greenfield, Christian Slater, Sarah Cooper, Peter Dinklage and Bill Burr.

Seinfeld joked that the “directorial debut” title makes him “feel like a Southern belle here, I’m a debutante.” When asked if he wants to continue directing or if this was a one-time move, the comedian insisted, “I don’t want to do anything but stand-up comedy and watching baseball and going for coffee. That’s the only things in life that I like. I’ve done all the other things and I don’t think they’re that great.”

Jerry Seinfeld of #Unfrosted on his "true love" for baseball, standup comedy and coffee pic.twitter.com/N8VBDWOcYN — The Hollywood Reporter (@THR) May 1, 2024

He also explained that he wasn’t so sold on the idea of a Pop-Tart film at first, but was convinced by former Seinfeld writers Spike Feresten and Andy Robin, with whom he wrote the script, on the idea of, “Why don’t we make a movie like The Right Stuff, only with cereal?”

The cast weighed in on Seinfeld’s directing skills on the carpet, as Gaffigan noted, “He’s very precise, he knows exactly what he wants the scene to land at and we don’t move on until we get it — but it’s not like Eyes Wide Shut or anything.”

Unfrosted starts streaming Friday on Netflix.

Tiffany Taylor contributed to this report.

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