The Ring
From AwardAnnals
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| Director(s) | Gore Verbinski |
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| Distributor | Dreamworks Video |
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| Disturbing images and a few good shocks don’t stop The Ring from being a hash of half-baked ideas. It’s the kind of frightfest you’ll watch to set a chilling mood or spook your susceptible friends, but when you try to sort it out, this well-mounted American remake (of the 1998 Japanese hit Ringu, based on Koji Suzuki’s popular novel) collapses into a heap of incoherent parts. The negligible plot follows a Seattle reporter (Naomi Watts) as she investigates the death of her niece, the victim of a mysterious videotape that, according to vague urban… | |
Honors
Reviews
Amazon.com
Disturbing images and a few good shocks don’t stop The Ring from being a hash of half-baked ideas. It’s the kind of frightfest you’ll watch to set a chilling mood or spook your susceptible friends, but when you try to sort it out, this well-mounted American remake (of the 1998 Japanese hit Ringu, based on Koji Suzuki’s popular novel) collapses into a heap of incoherent parts. The negligible plot follows a Seattle reporter (Naomi Watts) as she investigates the death of her niece, the victim of a mysterious videotape that, according to vague urban legend, causes the viewer’s death seven days later. (Fear Dot Com borrowed the same idea while avoiding this film’s lofty pretensions.) The reporter, her son, and her estranged boyfriend view the tape, and the film’s countdown structure follows them into deepening layers of terror—all quite effective until the movie attempts to explain itself. At that you’re better off shutting down your brain and letting the creepy visuals take over. —Jeff Shannon
Barnes and Noble
A truly blood-chilling exercise in supernatural horror, this American remake of Hideo Nakata’s 1998 Japanese cult classic depicts the inexplicable marriage of demonic malevolence and modern technology. The nightmarish tale gets underway as newspaper reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) investigates the bizarre fates of teenagers who have died exactly seven days after watching a certain videotape. Rachel watches the tape and pooh-poohs the idea that it might be cursed—until her young son (David Dorfman) starts making eerie drawings similar to those produced by the victims just days before they died. Despite the occasional plot hole—suspension of disbelief is a given in horror, anyway—screenwriter Ehren Kruger crafts a spine-tingling story that is visualized splendidly by director Gore Verbinski, who establishes a sinister, melancholy mood early on and sustains it through the excruciatingly tense final reel. This isn’t really an actor’s movie, but Watts handles herself surprisingly well, making believable that which is patently unbelievable. She gets able support from Brian Cox (playing a lonely old man whose past sins have a bearing on the present carnage) and Martin Henderson, who is extremely winning as the video geek who helps Rachel analyze the deadly tape. This ambitious little thriller isn’t always logical, but it’s relentlessly creepy, and that’s a quality you always want in a horror movie. Ed Hulse
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