An urban legend is at the core of this chilling offering from director Gore Verbinski ("The Mexican"), one that will assuredly have viewers thinking twice about answering the phone or even touching a VHS cassette.
The Ring
Release Date: Oct. 18, 2002
An urban legend is at the core of this chilling offering from director Gore Verbinski ("The Mexican"), one that will assuredly have viewers thinking twice about answering the phone or even touching a VHS cassette. Another item of note is that this film is a remake of "Ringu," a Japanese horror film that won huge box-office numbers and critical acclaim in the country of its origin.
The movie opens with two teenage girls (Amber Tamblyn of TV's "General Hospital" and Rachael Bella of "The Crucible") shooting the breeze as girls do regarding a videocassette that kills anyone seven days to the minute after watching it. One of them (Tamblyn) confesses to having watched such a tape the prior weekend with friends and receiving a sick-sounding phone call foretelling her death that very night. Mere minutes later, she finds herself alone in front of her TV set which displays the contents of the tape. Sure enough, she winds up dead and leaves nowhere near a good-looking corpse.
The girl's aunt, journalist Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts, "Mulholland Drive"), is begged by the girl's mother to look into her unexplained killing, which has thus far happened also to the others who watched the tape with her and all at the same time of day. Upon investigation of the resort cabin where she watched the cassette, Rachel finds and, ever the skeptic, pops it into the VCR and hits "play." After watching the thing, which looks like a David Lynch cutting room reel on acid, she receives the phone call. A young girl's voice. "Seven days..."
At first still skeptical but nevertheless wary of the tape's lethality, she confides in and shows the tape to her ex, Noah (Martin Henderson, "Windtalkers"). Analysis of the tape proves an exercise in futility. Hallucinations based in the tape's contents become increasingly frequent. And the quest to find an escape for the fate about to befall them becomes even more desperate when the pair's son (David Dorfman, TV's "Family Law") watches the cursed cassette out of boredom and insomnia. The pair's search into the tape's origins lead to the mysteries involving the death of a horse rancher's daughter (Daveigh Chase, "Lilo and Stitch").
The movie effectively portrays an atmosphere of dread throughout its running time, mostly due to its washed-out color scheme and constant feeling that the characters are indeed inching ever closer to their own demise. Watts is effective in trying to portray a woman running out of time and watching her sense of reality crumble around her. And, while it's become somewhat tired and formula in the current horror crop to have a small kid who seems more privy to what's happening than anyone else, Dorfman pulls it off without seeming overly sensitive or psychic. This especially proves correct in the film's ending, which hits like a ton of bricks.
The down side is that, minus a few exceptions, including the ending, you can see the freak-out moments forewarned minutes ahead of time. The spook factor on "The Ring" could've been heavily increased if those moments had zero or at least minimal buildup. Also, Henderson's Noah comes off as too much of a wiseguy jokester, even though he's having to contend with the impending deaths of not only himself, but his son and son's mother. And while the movie tries its best to explain the videotape's origins, they allow much to be left to the imagination. It does add an air of mystery to the legend of the video, but given that they explain many other intricacies already, the ambiguity smells more like a plot hole than a deliberate attempt at creating mood.
The 411: "The Ring" manages to deliver the goods as an effective chiller, though much of the weirdness and dangled carrots of exposition may make it frustrating for casual viewers. It's necessary to pay very close attention to this film, and even then, the whole story has yet to be told. It does deliver the goods in the fright department, and any movie that is sure to modify a person's behavior post-viewing is definitely worth a look.
