The Ring

Last night I bought a VCR so I could have access to all the VHS tapes I've been buying at thrift stores. It's something like the imperfections of a vinyl except the audio and visual quality is much more significantly depreciated. It's more of the crackle of the audio and the low-fi screen that makes certain features much more entertaining and nostalgic, even if I hadn't seen them before. To test out my new VCR I picked the closest physical tape to me. Unfortunately, it was Gore Verbinski's highly influential dabble into horror, The Ring. The Ring is just about ten times scarier on VHS as the tape begins with the totally effective "cursed tape" footage. The medium's subtle distortion perfectly plays up the spooky atmosphere of this slow-burning horror-mystery. The Ring has more in common with the horror films of old (ex: Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho, Lewis Allen's The Uninvited) where the unknown was not only horrifying, but also a mystery to be solved. Unlike those, however, The Ring has a pinch of surrealism. Combined with Bojan Bazelli's gloomy cinematography and Verbinski's bold direction, the film becomes a deeply unsettling investigation into the toxicity of technology, media, and, ultimately, humanity.