The Ring | 100 Movies Bucket List

 

I was really looking forward to this one - as I was practically all the horror movies on the bucket list.

I saw this film years ago - I've seen the spoofs, I've seen the original Japanese version (Ringu), I love this story. I'm actually surprised the Japanese version wasn't the one featured on the list, but I love them both so I don't mind which I get to watch again.

The concept of the film is so interesting and unique, particularly for the time the original was made. The idea itself is so simple that it could have played out in a thousand different ways, and most of those ways would have made for a bad film.

But this film does great things with the concept, and gets so much right that it's considered a classic.

The cast is great. Naomi Watts leads the film so well, Martin Henderson and David Dorfman do an amazing job, and Daveigh Chase is iconic as our 'villain' Samara - all of the other actors are great too but these four completely make the film.

It's the kind of movie that you can watch anywhere and get the same experience - a cinema, your living room, on your phone in the middle of the day? It doesn't matter, because it relies on the scariness of the idea itself rather than gimmicks and jumps.

Even as a viewer watching this film 23 years after it was made, during the day, I skipped every scene that showed the tape. That's how you know something is iconic!

But that's not to say that this is a flawless story - I definitely thought the Japanese version did a better job of tightening up this story, making sure that everything was necessary and that it was told as succinctly as possible.

This one had quite a few scenes that either felt longer than they needed to be, or were just completely unnecessary. If this story can be told in 90 minutes, a remake doesn't need to be 2 hours.

The backstory for the videotape doesn't feel as original as it could, and I think that's because the idea has been taken and used in some form many times over the years - there are little ideas in the film that have clearly been used as an inspiration for multiple horror and thriller films and it's so interesting to be able to see and compare.

This movie is a great addition to the list - it's definitely worth watching if you're into horror!