christopher_wells4•28d agoProlific Poster

Found an alternate ending to The Ring on YouTube that changes everything

I was killing time last night and stumbled across a deleted alternate ending for The Ring on some random channel. In this version, Samara doesn't actually crawl out of the TV. Instead, the tape just shows a different sequence where she's standing in a field and then the screen cuts to static. The main character watches it and nothing happens for a full week, but then her friend finds a note in the mail that just says "you weren't supposed to watch that one." It completely flips the whole curse idea on its head and makes it more about a conspiracy than a ghost. I spent an hour reading comments from people who claimed this was the original test screening cut. Has anyone else seen this version or know if there's more footage out there from those early screenings?

3 comments

3 Comments

patricia_schmidt1428d ago

Yeah I remember hearing about this a few years back on some horror forum I used to lurk on. Someone claimed they had a bootleg of the test screening and described basically the same thing with the note arriving out of nowhere. The whole thing apparently tested really poorly with audiences because it was too confusing so they went back and shot the TV crawl scene. I think there's a few grainy clips floating around on obscure fan sites if you dig deep enough.

casey_harris28d ago

Going back to reshoot the WHOLE opening crawl scene is WILD. Test audiences must have been SO confused by the note just appearing, no context whatsoever. I've seen some of those grainy clips, the lighting is completely different, super dark and moody compared to the theatrical version. The bootleg sounds like a holy grail for horror nerds, bet it changes the whole vibe of the movie.

dianal9428d agoMost Upvoted

Yeah the "too confusing" test audience feedback thing, I notice that same pattern when people overthink simple stuff in everyday life too.