The Ring

Other mistake: The skull they used for the little girl in the well is obviously an adult's skull.

Other mistake: When Samara is falling down the well and we see the approaching water surface from her POV, there is a reflection of Anna looking down the well but no reflection of Samara.

Factual error: In the scene where Noah analyses the tape, he says that the 'timecode' seems to be invalid and says that every tape has a track where you can see what device was used to record it, etc. The video technology explanation originates from the original, Ringu, with the plot of The Ring changed to make it more applicable to average Americans. But a VHS tape does not have a special track for timecode. It is possible to lay a timecode onto the tape in either an analogue form via a special audio channel, or as digital information on lines 16 and 18 of the vertical interval. But this 'timecode' is only used for professional video editing. A standard VCR, like the one they were playing the tape on, does not use this, and therefore makes Noah's explanation a minute of utter nonsense.

More mistakes in The Ring

Dr. Scott: You don't want to hurt anyone.
Samara Morgan: But I do, and I'm sorry. It won't stop. Everyone will suffer.

More quotes from The Ring

Trivia: When you see Samara standing in front of the well (before Anna pushes her in) she is singing the same tune as the music in the video.

More trivia for The Ring

Question: When does Rachel realise if she shows the film to someone else she won't die? And if she knew, is that why she showed it to Noah, to kill him on purpose?

Answer: Rachel doesn't know that showing the film to someone else will cause you not to die until death skips her. She remembers that Samara wanted to be "heard". She never meant to kill Noah.

Ginger Painter

Answer: At the end of the movie, she is crying about why she wasn't killed and Noah was. She vocalizes "What did I do, that he didn't?" That's when she sees the copy she made. It wasn't that she just showed it to someone else. She made a copy and Aiden watched that copy. Aiden is why it skipped her.

Almost right. It's just the copy. Copying the video makes it skip you. That's why she has Aiden make a copy as well.

lionhead

You have to show the copy to someone else as well. That's why Aiden asks Rachel at the very end "What about the person we show it to? What happens to them?"

Phaneron

But doesn't he have less than a day left by then? Hardly a time to relax, they need to make a terrible decision, quickly. I always had the idea making a copy was enough because of that.

lionhead

He watched the tape the morning of either Rachel's 4th or 5th day, so he should have at least 3 days left by this point. Though it appears the film was being inconsistent with the markings that Samara leaves on the tape's viewers, since Rachel noticed Samara's hand print on Aiden's arm and then his nose started bleeding. For Rachel, she got her nosebleed before receiving the mark on her arm.

Phaneron

Actually, you need to do both: make a copy and show it to someone else. This is further explained in The Ring 2. At the beginning, the guy had made a copy but since the girl covered her eyes and didn't watch the whole thing, he was still killed by Samara. So making a copy is not enough in itself to be spared if no-one else watches it. The same goes for Rachel. She made a copy on the 2nd day, but Becca tells her she only has 4 days left when she visits the psych ward indicating she hadn't been spared yet. It's only after Aidan watches the copy she made that death skips her for good.

Answer: No, it's wrong. Just making a copy won't save you; you need to show it to someone else, and then this someone else is cursed instead of you. The Japanese movie explains it well. Plus, in the official second movie, a man dies from Samara after making the copy because nobody watched it. Also, at the end of the 1st movie, Aiden asks from the copy, "What will happen to the one who will watch it?"

More questions & answers from The Ring

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