The Ring (2002)

Most people think so. 73% of audiences gave it a thumbs up, by Google's archived audience score. Critics agree, scoring it 64%.

Journalist Rachel Keller investigates a strange videotape that may be behind the untimely deaths of four teenagers. There is an urban legend about this tape: the viewer will die seven days after watching it. Rachel tracks down the video... and watches it. Now she has just seven days to unravel the mystery of the Ring in order to save herself and her son. Wikipedia ↗

The Ring is a 2002 American supernatural horror film directed by Gore Verbinski, a remake of the 1998 Japanese horror film Ringu. Naomi Watts stars as Rachel Keller, a Seattle journalist investigating the death of her niece, which leads her to a mysterious VHS tape: anyone who watches the tape receives a phone call informing them they will die in seven days. After Rachel watches the tape herself, she must solve the mystery of its origin — tracing it to Samara Morgan, a disturbed child who was murdered and thrown into a well — before her seven days expire.

The Ring was the film that launched the wave of American remakes of Japanese horror in the early 2000s, and it remains the finest example of the trend. Gore Verbinski created a perpetually rain-drenched, desaturated Pacific Northwest atmosphere that made every frame feel damp and cold. The imagery of the videotape — surreal, disconnected, and deeply unsettling — was genuinely nightmarish, and Samara's emergence from a television set in the film's climax became one of modern horror's most iconic scares.

The Ring earned $249 million worldwide on a $48 million budget.