Ringu

A cursed videotape kills its viewer in seven days.

Nakata's film was an enormous hit across Asia and the American remake in 2002 took 249 million dollars, after which Hollywood optioned essentially every Japanese horror film that existed.

Two innovations. Sadako moves wrongly: the footage was shot with the actress walking backwards and then reversed, so the motion is smooth and completely incorrect at once, and it took twenty years for anybody to do it better. And the curse spreads like media rather than like a haunting, which means the only survival is to pass it on. There is no clean exit and the film ends with Reiko driving to her father's house.

The well sequence is what people remember. The scene that actually works is the photograph, which arrives early and quietly and tells you exactly how the rest of the film will go.