History NightmareFuel / TheRing

** Meanwhile the DVD version just offers the full video as one of the options on the bonus feature menu... After you watch it, you're brought back to the main menu, [[heFourthWallWillNotProtectYou but now the sound of a ringing phone is playing in the background]].

** Meanwhile the DVD version just offers the full video as one of the options on the bonus feature menu... After you watch it, you're brought back to the main menu, but now the sound of a ringing phone is playing in the background.

** The premise that this movie is set in the present (i.e mid 2010's) is terrifying enough. Think about it: when the original novel and films were made, the only way the Tape could be passed on was by copying a VHS, because that was the only reliable method of sharing videos back then. Now we have the internet, and videos can be streamed onto our computers, cell phones, cars...in other words, ''exactly'' the environment Samara would need to make sure she reaches a wide audience.

Using a [[HauntedTechnology cursed videotape]] as a plot device may have caused ''Literature/TheRing'' to [[UnintentionalPeriodPiece date itself]] easily, but terror within has proven itself to remain timeless.

* The part when the heroine is climbing out of the well while Samara is creeping UP the wall below her. It's the legs. The way they suddenly step in front in a logically spine breaking way (that and the constant slow speed of the "walk").

Using a [[HauntedTechnology cursed videotape]] as a plot device caused ''Literature/TheRing'' to have a story that [[UnintentionalPeriodPiece dated itself]] pretty easily. However, the terror within has proven itself to remain timeless.

* At the Yamamura guest house, Mai experiences a psychic episode wherein she and Dr Kawajiri see a live-action flashback of the "hair combing" scene of the tape - in the very room where it happened. Sadako's shuffling past Mai from behind is bad enough but, after a few loops of the teleporting-mirror sequence, Shizuko stops combing, pauses, and then ''[[TheFourthWallWillNotProtectYou turns to look at Mai and Kawajiri]]'', before ''gliding'' towards them with an expression that can only be described as '''terrifying'''.

* At the Yamamura guest house, Mai experiences a psychic episode wherein she and Dr Kawajiri see a live-action flashback of the "hair combing" scene of the tape - in the very room where it happened. Sadako's shuffling past Mai from behind is bad enough but, after a few loops of the teleporting-mirror sequence, Shizuko stops combing, pauses, and then ''[[BreakingTheFourthWall turns to look at Mai and Kawajiri]]'', before ''gliding'' towards them with an expression that can only be described as '''terrifying'''.

* At the Yamamura guest house, Mai experiences a psychic episode wherein she and Dr Kawajiri see a live-action flashback of the "hair combing" scene of the tape - in the very room where it happened. Sadako's shuffling past her from behind is bad enough but, after a few loops of the "teleporting mirror" sequence, Shizuko stops combing, pauses, and then ''[[BreakingTheFourthWall turns to look at Mai and Kawajiri]]'', before ''gliding'' towards them with an expression that can only be described as '''terrifying'''.

* The soundtrack gives the film an undercurrent of unremitting ''menace'', alternating between low, organic ''grinding'' sounds, and screeching strings.

** The old woman in the video is theorized to be a visual interpretation of [[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/En_no_Gyōja En no Ozunu]], a ''real'' historical figure who inhabited the island where the Yamamura family lived and who is implied to be the one giving Shizuko, and by extension, Sadako, her powers.

* The sheer UncannyValley of Sadako's [[https://www.denofgeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/19940.jpg lone, angry eye]]. According to Behind The Scenes material, this was achieved by having a male crew member fill in for the scene, and trim off his eyelashes. Also invokes NothingIsScarier by raising the question of what the rest of Sadako's face is like.

* A truly disturbing moment in the film arrived in the DeliberatelyMonochrome flashback to Sadako's mother giving a demonstration of her psychic abilities. The reporters present begin to shout "Fraud!", and all of a sudden, one of them just drops dead, wearing the same twisted face as Sadako's present-day victims. We cut to the present for a moment as the protagonists react to this information, and then, without warning, we cut back to the flashback. Sadako runs out from behind the corner — our first real glimpse of the StringyHairedGhostGirl — almost scuttling, like an insect. A subtle moment in the overall scheme of the movie, but truly effective.