If you remember anything about Gore Verbinski¡¯s cursed-videotape chiller, ¡°The Ring,¡± released 20 years ago in the United States on Tuesday, it¡¯s probably the whispered threat: seven days.
Or maybe it¡¯s the eyes of a creepy little girl, peering out from behind a curtain of stringy black hair; or the uncanny images ¡ª a flaming-red tree, dead horses scattered along a seashore, a finger pushed through a rusty nail ¡ª that made up the film-within-the-film. In ¡°The Ring,¡± any unlucky soul who watches this bizarre videotape receives a menacing phone call as soon as it cuts to static, and in a week they¡¯re kaput at the hands of a soggy ghoul who crawls out of a TV.
¡°The Ring,¡± based on the wildly successful Japanese novel by Koji Suzuki as well as the 1998 film adaptation by Hideo Nakata, doesn¡¯t rely on a high body count, or much in the form of blood and guts, for scares. Yet for a generation of horror-lovers, it taps into a familiar feeling of ambient anxiety and inexplicable unease that remains omnipresent to this day.
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