The Ring (2002)

The Ring is a 2002 American supernatural horror film directed by Gore Verbinski and starring Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, David Dorfman, Brian Cox, and Daveigh Chase. It is a remake of Hideo Nakata's 1998 Japanese horror film Ring, based on Koji Suzuki's 1991 novel of the same name.

Plot
It sounds like just another urban legend -- a videotape filled with nightmarish images leads to a phone call foretelling the viewer's death in exactly seven days. Newspaper reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) is skeptical of the story until four teenagers all die mysteriously exactly one week after watching just such a tape. Allowing her investigative curiosity to get the better of her, Rachel tracks down the video and watches it. Now she has just seven days to unravel the mystery.

Good Qualities

 * 1) Not only is faithful to the novel of the same name, but it is also faithful to the Japanese horror film.
 * 2) Hans Zimmer's score deserves special mention; in a far cry from his bombastic themes for Gladiator and Pirates of the Caribbean, here he uses only a piano, and a small string section with violin and cello. And it works.
 * 3) Samara is a really scary and entertaining antagonist, who is the child antagonist from the horror killer.
 * 4) There is in fact a rather funny moment within the first US film. When Noah goes to the ward to get the tape containing Samara's session, the medical guard bluntly calls off his lies (being that Noah says he's Samara's father) and tells him he has everything in check in the ward. He ends up opening the tape box to reveal it's gone and drops this line: "Okay, now I'm mad.".
 * 5) Plenty of scary scene that contains little gore, like Samara coming out of the TV and Katie in the closet scene for jump scare.
 * 6) * The Reveal of Samara's face is also pretty damn terrifying. Its not so much the rotted, undead nature of the face, its the amount of raw, seething hatred in her expression.
 * 7) ** In fact, the second time Samara delivers the lines with a different context, as revenge than apology.
 * 8) ** At first hearing, Samara's innocent answer can be interpreted as "I don't want to hurt anyone, but I do anyway." but her murderous nature is further revealed, it can instead be interpreted as "I DO want to hurt people."
 * 9) The movie has emotional moments throughout that.
 * 10) *Samara's death. What makes it so sad is how Anna seems regretful of killing Samara, considering she wanted to have a daughter, but Samara was just such a horrible influence on hers and Richard's lives... Worse, she just bashes Samara's head with a rock and tosses her in a well.
 * 11) *Noah and Aidan's talk in the car, where its revealed Noah's his father. The talk is pretty depressing, especially when Noah reveals the reason he basically became a "deadbeat dad" was because he felt he wouldn't make a good father. Doesn't help that even though it seems Noah and Rachel are going to get back together again, he dies.
 * 12) **Noah's death in general along with Rachel's reaction.

Bad Qualities

 * 1) The ending doesn't make sense.
 * 2) Weak characters.

Reception
The Ring received mostly positive reviews, with critics praising the atmosphere, visuals, and Watts's performance. On review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 71% based on 207 reviews, with an average rating of 6.60/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "With little gore and a lot of creepy visuals, The Ring gets under your skin, thanks to director Gore Verbinski's haunting sense of atmosphere and an impassioned performance from Naomi Watts.". Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 57 out of 100, based on 36 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B–" on an A+ to F scale.