Ringu

Hideo Nakata's 1998 Japanese horror film rewrote the rules of what could scare an audience. No gore, no monsters, no jump scares — just a cursed videotape, a ticking clock, and Sadako climbing out of a television set in a scene that traumatized an entire generation. Ringu proved that suggestion and atmosphere could be more terrifying than anything explicit, and it launched the J-horror wave that Hollywood spent a decade trying to replicate.