The Ring

The Ring was a psychological horror American film produced in 2002 directed by Gore Verbinski. The main plot was based on a Japanese novel of a cursed videotape displaying a set of disturbing images, after the tape finishes the viewer would receive a mysterious phone call in which they would be told they would die in seven days.


The film starts off with an establishing shot of a suburban house, it slowly zooms in closer. This shows to the viewer that what is going to happen is going to be here. This is accompanied by the ambient sound of rain and the scene is of night, using this pathetic fallacy it foreshadows that themes of dark qualities are going to take place inside the house as it creates a negative atmosphere for the audience. While the camera is still zooming in on the house dialogue from unknown female character starts from the place the established shot was focusing on.

The next scene cuts to a two shot of two females, one sitting on the floor while the other laying on a bed. The mise-en-scene is of a bedroom, the audience can tell this because of the composition of objects, bed, bed side lamp, curtains etc. The two characters are dressed in black and white school uniform, suggesting that the film is aimed at a young adult audience as the age group is relevant to them. The brunette character is sitting on the floor holding a TV remote, which is where the only light comes from which is dim and dark keeping the audience tense from because of the brooding scene as the diagetic sound of rain is still in the background. The blonde character is given the remote, the shot cuts to the TV being turned of then quickly cuts back to her, this showing that the important events are about to start.

Dialogue is shown to be the most important thing taking place as the audience is being made to focus on the conversation of the unnamed characters. The audience knows this by change of camera shots, it changes to a close up of the brunette character so audience knows what she is saying is important as nothing else is going on in the scene. The shot then cuts to a point of view shot to show blonde characters distressed reaction and response, another method of keeping the audience tense, as well as now the rain in the background is more distinct adding to the dramatic impact on the audience foreshadowing the darkness of the topic of conversation.

The dialogue then begins to increase between both characters as it switches between close-up’s of the characters. The increase in pace makes the audience feel more anxious as they feel that a shocking event is more likely to happen at any more as the pace continues to climb. By the end of the 2 minutes the characters are still un-named, this suggests to the audience that these two characters are irrelevant to the main plot.


Sophie Grayling