The Ring holds up. Creative monster, clear rules, fantastic trailer, a premise that inspires worry about everyday situations, A+ execution on the central video, and - most importantly for a horror movie - flawless sound.

Also a stand-out example of localization. The original is very Japanese. This adaptation thoroughly westernized it without a hint of pandering or exoticism, and without being a jumble of cliches. You get tiny glimpses of a sanitarium near a sleepy New England sound. The characters go to a remote cabin in the woods, for safety, and it’s a reasonable decision. All of this is American, specifically, but it would take vanishingly little to set it in Newfoundland or Scandinavia. It never feels like a movie about an imported mythology. The mote of hand-wavy foreign mystery is only as alien as a Stephen King story.