In terms of their usage in horror films, the technological aspects of the videotape and the telephone can be used to expose anxieties around the family unit and general modern connectivity. Ringu explores common fears surrounding the loss of control of one’s life and family at the hands of modern technology by combining supernatural horror tropes and the familiar to create an uncanny portrait of contemporary anxieties in an unexpected way.

The horror genre thrives on limitations. Limitations may be economical, but they can also be thematic. Horror movies are explicitly meant to elicit one ultra-specific response from their audiences: fear. My favorite Carpenter film is his scariest, and no film has scared me like The Thing (Carpenter 1982). Imagination is something John Carpenter has never lacked. His version of the novella Who Goes There? would be radically different from the 1951 film, which meant that he’d have to stretch the limits of the silver screen further than audiences had ever seen before.