‘The Ring’, a Japanese horror classic,  released almost 20 years ago, still ramps up fans’ mind. Its influence can be seen in “Smile,” “It Follows” and many more, creating a familiar feeling of ambient anxiety and unexplainable unease that remains unnervingly omnipresent even today.

The plot is based on the famous and successful Japanese novel by Koji Suzuki along with the 1998 film adaptation by Hideo Nakata which does not surround around high body count or depict blood or guts for scaring the audience like other horror  movies. Still, for a generation of horror-lovers, ‘The Ring’ frighten the life out of them. The main plot was, whenever any unlucky soul watches a bizarre videotape, receives a phone call which cuts to static and within a week they are put in hands of a ghoul who crawls out of a TV.

The zeal around J-horror remakes have been short-lived, but the one of the reason behind ‘The Ring’ being so  frightening in 2002 is the transferable nature of the death sentence which in turn makes the victims complicit.  Since the release of ‘The Ring’, several American horror movies had used a similar idea to get desired and profitable results. Such was also seen in ‘It Follows’ where ” a teenager maneuvers to offload her supernatural STD on a sexual partner, who, upon consummation, takes on the spell and is relentlessly followed by a murderous undead entity”. Moreover, Simile, Mulholland Drive, Scary Movie 3 and many more has revolved around this formula.

The film is considered a ‘classic of millennial horror’ which made the audience hung on to it. The film earned near around $130 million domestically and started a chain of American remakes of Japanese horror movies which in turn became a distinct trend in Hollywood. With the 1999 hits, “The Sixth Sense” and “The Blair Witch Project,” the popularity of “The Ring” depicted a change in the mindset from the fascination with teen-slasher fare that had overruled the previous three decades.

With time, there came several other remakes of J-horror sensations, like “The Grudge” (2004) and “Dark Waters” (2005), but none achieved same level of cultural impact. ‘The Ring’ created a legacy even if it includes some truly horrendous sequels and deflating elements.