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49 free The Ring trivia questions with answers — entertainment quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Seven days. Two decades on, The Ring is still the film that made a whole generation nervous about static on a TV screen. Gore Verbinski's 2002 remake of Hideo Nakata's Ringu grossed nearly $250 million, launched the American J-horror boom and gave the world Samara Morgan crawling out of the well. This quiz covers the whole franchise: the 2002 film's cast, plot and Oregon locations, its marketing stunt and its cut scenes, the 1998 Japanese original and how it changed Koji Suzuki's novel, Sadako's story, The Ring Two, the 2005 short Rings and the 2017 sequel. Easy questions cover the curse and the stars; the hard ones dig into cinematography, screenwriters and the novel's darker details. Every answer has been checked against documented sources and the source is shown after each question.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who directed the 2002 American film The Ring?
Gore Verbinski
Gore Verbinski directed The Ring (2002); the following year he directed Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.
Q 02Who plays journalist Rachel Keller in The Ring?
Naomi Watts
Naomi Watts plays Rachel Keller; she had broken through the year before in David Lynch's Mulholland Drive (2001).
Q 03How long do viewers of the cursed tape have to live?
Seven days
Seven days: when the tape ends the phone rings and a voice whispers 'seven days', the time left before Samara comes for the viewer.
Q 04In The Ring (2002), what is the name of the girl in the well whose rage created the cursed tape?
Samara Morgan
Samara Morgan was adopted after Anna Morgan suffered four consecutive miscarriages, and could psychically etch images into objects and minds.
Q 05Which young actress plays Samara in the 2002 film?
Daveigh Chase
Daveigh Chase plays Samara; the same year she voiced Lilo in Disney's Lilo & Stitch (2002).
Q 06Who plays Rachel's ex, video analyst Noah Clay?
Martin Henderson
Martin Henderson plays Noah Clay, Rachel's ex and Aidan's father; the New Zealand actor later played Nathan Riggs on Grey's Anatomy.
Q 07Which veteran Scottish actor plays Samara's adoptive father Richard Morgan?
Brian Cox
Brian Cox plays Richard Morgan, who electrocutes himself in the bathtub rather than discuss Samara; Cox later played Logan Roy in Succession.
Q 08Which actress plays Katie Embry, the teenager who dies in the opening scene?
Amber Tamblyn
Amber Tamblyn plays Katie Embry, Rachel's niece, whose death after watching the tape opens the film; Tamblyn later starred in The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants.
Q 09In The Ring (2002), what does Samara crawl out of to kill her victims?
A television
A television: Samara crawls out of the screen to kill Noah in the film's climax, an image taken directly from the Japanese original.
Q 10Who wrote the 1991 novel on which the whole franchise is based?
Koji Suzuki
Koji Suzuki wrote Ring (1991); Vertical published the English translation in 2003, a year after the American film.
Q 11Which US city is the American film set in, chosen for its 'wet and isolated' atmosphere?
Seattle
Seattle: Rachel Keller is a newspaper reporter in the city, and the remake swapped the original's Tokyo for the rainy, isolated Pacific Northwest.
Q 12What is the name of the inn where Katie and her friends first watched the tape?
Shelter Mountain Inn
Shelter Mountain Inn: Katie's group watched the tape in cabin 12, beneath whose floorboards Rachel and Noah find Samara's well.
Q 13What was Anna Morgan's occupation?
Horse breeder
Anna Morgan was a horse breeder on Moesko Island; her horses drowned themselves, and a horse on Rachel's ferry leaps overboard to its death.
Q 21Which two prizes did The Ring win at the 29th Saturn Awards?
Best Horror Film and Best Actress
At the 29th Saturn Awards (2003) The Ring won Best Horror Film and Best Actress, the latter for its lead performance as Rachel Keller.
Q 22What first sent The Ring's director toward the project?
Producer Walter F. Parkes mailed him a VHS of the Japanese film
Producer Walter F. Parkes mailed him a VHS of the Japanese film, the 1998 Ring; Parkes and his wife Laurie MacDonald went on to produce the remake.
Q 23Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli gave The Ring what distinctive look?
Q 14Which real Oregon landmark doubled as the Moesko Island beacon?
Yaquina Head Lighthouse
Yaquina Head Lighthouse, near Newport on the Oregon coast, stood in for the Moesko Island lighthouse glimpsed on the cursed tape.
Q 15Which studio released The Ring in October 2002?
DreamWorks Pictures
DreamWorks Pictures released The Ring on October 18, 2002; it opened at number one in the US and grew into a sleeper hit over the following weeks.
Q 16Roughly how much did The Ring take at the worldwide box office?
$249 million
The Ring grossed about $249 million worldwide on a $48 million budget, roughly $129 million of it in the United States.
Q 17Which screenwriter wrote The Ring before an uncredited rewrite by Scott Frank?
Ehren Kruger
Ehren Kruger wrote The Ring and returned for The Ring Two; he also wrote Scream 3 and three of the Transformers sequels.
Q 18Who composed the score for The Ring?
Hans Zimmer
Hans Zimmer composed the score for The Ring, beginning a long collaboration with its director that included the Pirates of the Caribbean sequels and Rango.
Q 19Which Oscar-winning actor's bookend scenes as a murderer were cut entirely from The Ring?
Chris Cooper
Chris Cooper filmed bookend scenes as a convicted child murderer that were cut entirely; Cooper won his Oscar for Adaptation months after The Ring's release.
Q 20How was the cursed video itself used in the marketing campaign in summer 2002?
Aired late at night on TV with no reference to the movie
The cursed tape itself aired late at night on TV with no reference to the movie; the studio also built in-universe websites for its fictional people and places.
Soft lighting and a grey blue-green colour
Bazelli gave The Ring soft lighting and a grey blue-green colour, desaturated and cold; the palette became a signature of the J-horror remake wave that followed.
Q 24Who directed the original 1998 Japanese film Ring?
Hideo Nakata
Hideo Nakata directed Ring (1998) and its 1999 sequel Ring 2, then crossed the Pacific to direct the American The Ring Two in 2005.
Q 25What is the name of the vengeful spirit in Ring (1998), the Japanese film The Ring remade?
Sadako Yamamura
Sadako Yamamura was thrown down a well; her mother Shizuko's psychic abilities had been publicly demonstrated and mocked.
Q 26In adapting the novel, the Japanese filmmakers changed the protagonist in what major way?
From a married man to a divorced woman
The protagonist went from a married man to a divorced woman: the novel's Kazuyuki Asakawa became Reiko Asakawa on screen, and his baby daughter became her son Yoichi.
Q 27Who plays reporter Reiko Asakawa in the 1998 film?
Nanako Matsushima
Nanako Matsushima plays Reiko Asakawa opposite Hiroyuki Sanada as her psychic ex-husband Ryūji; she also starred in the 1998 TV drama Great Teacher Onizuka.
Q 28Ring (1998) was released in Japan on the same day as which sequel, shot back-to-back with it?
Spiral
Spiral (Rasen), directed by Jōji Iida, opened the same day as Ring; it flopped, and 1999's Ring 2 simply ignored its story.
Q 29What record did Ring set on its release in Japan?
Highest-grossing horror film in the country
Ring became the highest-grossing horror film in the country on its Japanese release, a success that spawned a sequel the next year, a prequel, and the 2002 Hollywood remake.
Q 30In what form was the novel first adapted, in 1995, before the 1998 film?
A made-for-TV film
Ring: Kanzenban, a made-for-TV film broadcast by Fuji Television in 1995, was the novel's first adaptation, three years before the cinema version.