Ring is a 1998 Japanese supernatural psychological horror film directed by Hideo Nakata, based on the 1991 novel by Koji Suzuki. The film stars Nanako Matsushima, Miki Nakatani, and Hiroyuki Sanada, and follows a reporter who is racing to investigate the mystery behind a cursed video tape; whoever watches the tape dies seven days after doing so. The film is titled The Ring in English in Japan and released as Ringu in North America.
Japanese theatrical release poster
Image: Nanako Matsushima in 2010 10
Image: Hiroyuki Sanada 2013 (cropped)
Psychological horror is a subgenre of horror and psychological fiction with a particular focus on mental, emotional, and psychological states to frighten, disturb, or unsettle its audience. The subgenre frequently overlaps with the related subgenre of psychological thriller, and often uses mystery elements and characters with unstable, unreliable, or disturbed psychological states to enhance the suspense, horror, drama, tension, and paranoia of the setting and plot and to provide an overall creepy, unpleasant, unsettling, or distressing atmosphere.
The Black Cat (1934), an early psychological horror film that adapts a story by Edgar Allan Poe