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97 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days
xx Beer for My Horses
75 Boy A
xx Christmas on Mars: A Fantastical Film Freakout Featuring the Flaming Lips
48 Death Defying Acts
85 Edge of Heaven, The
33 Elite Squad
80 Encounters at the End of the World
20 Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
86 Flight of the Red Balloon, The
54 Get Smart
73 Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson
34 Happening, The
25 Hell Ride
78 Hellboy II: The Golden Army
44 Henry Poole is Here
61 Incredible Hulk, The
65 Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
46 Jack Brooks: Monster Slayer
57 Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D
xx Kiss the Bride
63 Kit Kittredge: An American Girl
73 Kung Fu Panda
52 Milarepa
62 Mister Foe
53 Mister Lonely
74 Mongol
61 On the Rumba River
83 Paranoid Park
32 Perfect Holiday, The
49 Pirates Who Don't Do Anything: A VeggieTales Movie, The
63 Planet B-Boy
72 Priceless
63 Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2, The
70 Standard Operating Procedure
35 Star Wars: The Clone Wars
57 Stone Angel, The
47 Strangers, The
61 Stuck
55 Sukiyaki Western Django
63 This Christmas
71 To the Limit
72 Transsiberian
71 Tropic Thunder
79 Visitor, The
93 WALL-E
37 War, Inc.
xx Whaledreamers
54 What We Do Is Secret
66 When Did You Last See Your Father?
54 You Don't Mess with the Zohan
39 Young People F**king
45 Zombie Strippers

Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.

Ring, The
DreamWorks Distribution LLC


6.9

based on 36 reviews
Read critic reviews
How did we calculate this?

based on 81 votes
Read user comments
Rate this movie

FILM:

The Ring Two

MPAA RATING: PG-13 for thematic elements, disturbing images, language and some drug references

Starring Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, David Dorfman, Brian Cox, Jane Alexander, Lindsay Frost, Amber Tamblyn, and Rachael Bella

In this remake of one of Japan's biggest box office hits, Naomi Watts plays a journalist who discovers a mysterious videotape that is connected to several deaths.

GENRE(S):	Suspense/Thriller
WRITTEN BY:	Ehren Kruger Hiroshi Takahashi (1998 screenplay Ringu) Kôji Suzuki (novel Ringu)
DIRECTED BY:	Gore Verbinski
RELEASE DATE:	DVD: March 4, 2003 Video: March 4, 2003 Theatrical: October 18, 2002
RUNNING TIME:	109 minutes, Color
ORIGIN:	USA / Japan

All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...

100

San Francisco Chronicle C.W. Nevius

So good it's scary.

Washington Post Stephen Hunter

The creepiest, clammiest, twitchiest squealfest in months. It offers, among its many pleasures, the happiness of safe fear.

Dallas Observer Gregory Weinkauf

At last Dreamworks has given us the stuff of nightmare.

Film Threat Jim Agnew

Dark, disturbing and original throughout. You know that you’re going to see something a little different than your usual studio crap.

Rolling Stone Peter Travers

The pickings are slim for scares this Halloween season (Ghost Ship, Below), so The Ring wins first prize by default.

The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps

As a marriage of big-budget filmmaking and old-fashioned scare tactics, it easily ranks alongside last year's "The Others."

Time Richard Schickel

An edgy, watchable film, but one that makes you feel more squeamish than screamish.

Austin Chronicle Marc Savlov

The less said about The Ring, the better for you, the sooner-to-be-freaked-out.

Chicago Tribune Robert K. Elder

Ends up a few frames short of the perfect horror film, but very few.

Entertainment Weekly Owen Gleiberman

The best thing about the movie, which is a very elegantly crafted piece of gothic snuff hokum, is the way it teases and intrigues us with the revelation of what's on that tape.

Seattle Post-Intelligencer William Arnold

The Ring, is going to be this year's version of the "Blair Witch" and "Sixth Sense" phenomenon.

Charlotte Observer Lawrence Toppman

If your senses haven't been dulled by slasher films and gorefests, if you're a connoisseur of psychological horror, this is your ticket.

TV Guide Ken Fox

A frighteningly good horror movie with enough solid scares to freeze the blood of ardent fans and newcomers alike.

Newsweek David Ansen

This visually stunning movie serves up generous dollops of designer creepiness.

Salon.com Andrew O'Hehir

A deviously engineered parasite that'll crawl under your skin and live in your nervous system for a while if you give it half a chance.

The Globe and Mail (Toronto) Liam Lacey

It's a workmanlike, passably engrossing horror flick that copies well from the Japanese original. When it's good, it's not original, and when it's original, it's not so good.

USA Today Claudia Puig

Too many threads are left dangling and the movie ultimately proves too implausible to put alongside those horror classics.

Baltimore Sun Michael Sragow

What we have here is a suburban-legend movie stripped of rough edges and cut off from any depth that might have made it insidiously haunting.

Miami Herald Rene Rodriguez

It's an understatement to say that The Ring is not your ordinary horror film. And never forget to rewind.

Slate David Edelstein

The movie is meant to get into you like a virus, and it does.

LA Weekly David Chute

In the final reel, the tension dissipates with a flabby hiss, as the film devolves into a banal, conventional ghost story.

Portland Oregonian Shawn Levy

Never quite catches fire. They take a crackerjack premise and a comely, committed leading lady and turn in a merely OK film.

Chicago Sun-Times Roger Ebert

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.

New York Post Lou Lumenick

A stylish but distressingly generic and not particularly scary American remake of a phenomenally popular Japanese supernatural thriller that spawned two sequels and a TV miniseries.

ReelViews James Berardinelli

Takes things too far by leaving about 75% of its questions unanswered. This isn't an artistic choice; it's screenwriting sloppiness, and it results in a profoundly dissatisfying experience.

Philadelphia Inquirer Carrie Rickey

A creepy, oozy, dopey remake of the stylish 1998 Japanese thriller, "Ringu."

Washington Post Desson Thomson

Has its creepy moments, but also its cliches.

Los Angeles Times Kenneth Turan

Certainly acceptable. But no one seeing it is going to feel as spooked as executive producer Roy Lee. To make an audience feel that intensely, you need a different kind of director and a different kind of film.

Boston Globe Wesley Morris

The unworthy new Hollywood remake of Japan's horror phenomenon, ''Ring,'' has packed on a definite article and a whole lot of hooey.

Variety Todd McCarthy

Comes across in muted fashion, with uninvolving characters and lack of genuine excitement or fright creating a second-rate, second-hand feel.

The New York Times A.O. Scott

While impressively made, this impassive and cold feature fails, in a spectacular fashion, to deliver the thrills.

Film Threat Rick Kisonak

Watts is extra-watchable and, as I say, the filmmaker does achieve a style and tone the script never comes close to living up to. Otherwise, Verbinski's adaptation of the 1998 Japanese hit "Ringu" misses the mark almost completely.

New York Daily News Jack Mathews

I hated it, but I grant that it does tap into a vein of technological horror - the fear of the VCR! - that will have young videophiles chatting it up for weeks

Village Voice Michael Atkinson

Requiring an enormous amount of suspended disbelief, the original Rings may be a culture-specific phenom; despite strenuous efforts to Americanize Nakata's field of bad dreams, the preview audience did a lot of cackling.

Wall Street Journal Joe Morgenstern

Won't kill you, but it could bore you half to death.

Chicago Reader Jonathan Rosenbaum

It's an utter waste of Watts; there's not a trace here of the talent on display in Mulholland Drive, perhaps because the script doesn't bother to give her a character.

The average user rating for this movie is 6.9 (out of 10) based on 81 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.

[Anonymous] gave it a9:
Its cryptic images and creepy symbolism get under your skin and never leave again. You'll reference this movie far after you've seen it.

Jivko gave it a10:
Excellent movie.

Gordon M. gave it a10:
This is the best movie of all time! I personally can't see what people are moaning about! I was so scared when Samara came out of the T.V. It is the perfect horror movie, and Naomi Watts played the part perfectly. My friends love it, I love it, so it IS the best movie ever made!

Kevin B. gave it a1:
okey dokey...first off: the only reason it gets a 1 is cause some of the screen shots were pretty cool, being a black & white photographer and all. But as a movie? This was a complete and utter waste of time...sadly most scarey movies are like this today: not scarey. A little girl who records herself crawling out of a well, and then gives it to somebody and makes funny noises. The only reason I saw it in the theater? A friend of mine was scared to see it. While alot of people were screaming in fear, me and a few other strangers got together and made fun of it. OMG! a little girl with black hair! AH save me! now i cant sleep for Weeks!!!

Will gave it a10:
I was shocked and appauled when I saw that The Ring only scored a 57 on metacritic.com. Clearly the reviewers presented failed to see not only the cinematic brilliance of the film, but the intelligence of it's winding plotline. Some of the shots in The Ring are simply breathtaking, and the cinematography alone makes it worth seeing. As well, the "evil" tape itself is very sophisticated, and many of the images presented are viewed by many psychologists as "death images" i.e the maggots, the empty chair, and the ladder to nowhere. As for the plot line; it twists and turns always keeps you guessing. Despite it's complexity, their are no loose ends left, and by the end of the movie everything fits together like clockwork. Like other artistic horror movies such as 28 Days Later, The Ring is horrifying in it's imagery and atmosphere, not through blood and guts. It may not be the scariest movie that you'll ever see, but I definitely had goosebumps throughout. I'm VERY dissapointed to see that so many of the above reviews have failed to see the intelligence that Verbinski applies to each and every camera angle. If you have half a brain about you, I recommend The Ring over any other horror movie in recent years.

Lauren s. gave it a10:
I had to sleep with my parents for three nights. very very terrifying. my friends and i are still scared of samara. compelling, and psychlogical. loved it.

Mel gave it a6:
Let's face it, this movie is not scary. It draws you in because you wonder what happened to the little girl and why she wants to hurt people, but sleepless nights? I don't think so! 'White Noise' gave me sleepless nights and is far scarier. This is just an interesting supernatural thriller.

Ring, The DreamWorks Distribution LLC

Ring, The
DreamWorks Distribution LLC