The Ring (2002)

Based on Koji Suzuki's 1991 novel and loosely remade from Hideo Nakata's 1998 film adaptation, the 2002 Hollywood take on The Ring was a sleeper hit that shrewdly played off a number of prevalent trends found at the turn of the millennium (it lifted its color palette from The Matrix, it featured a precocious child character like the one found in The Sixth Sense, and it engaged in a guerilla marketing campaign like The Blair Witch Project). The Ring also set off a few trends of its own; among other things, a whole bunch of American remakes of Japanese horror movies were produced in its wake. Ryan is joined by Sylvan for a chat about this popular and well-remembered horror movie. Discussion topics center upon the cultural ubiquity of ghost stories, how The Ring crafts inversions of collective hopes about the afterlife, the reasons for the surprisingly long cultural reach of the movie's score, and the story's subtext when it comes to free speech and journalism.