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11/15/02

Starring: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, David Dorfman, Brian Cox
Directed by: Gore Verbinski

Rating: ** 1/2 stars (out of 4 stars)

Gore Verbinski’s The Ring is a decent remake of the skillful 1998 Japanese cult hit Ringu. This suspenseful creepy tale details the frightening account about some cursed videotape that brings dire misfortune to any who watches it. Conversely, this definitely has some chilly effects to it that works on the nervous system. Although The Ring practically shares the same premise as the previously laughable and incoherent scarefest dud Feardotcom, Verbinski’s horror entry is perhaps one of the most resourceful and scariest movies to legitimately engross audiences in years.

This bone-tingling thriller will make one’s skin crawl and surprisingly without all the excess violent tics that usually accompany this kind of frenzied flick. Yes, this movie has its share of grotesque moments that are quite disturbing but Verbinski has a handle on delivering this eye-popping vehicle with a dose of sensationalistic bravura that sets the right tone. If anything, The Ring is somewhat seriously flawed because it does lead the moviegoer down a path of great anticipation only to turn around and skirt some of the hokey horror-related clichéd issues it raised so vehemently. Still, this uneven haunting vehicle manages to convincingly stimulate the genre where other flicks of its ilk fail to do with consistency.

Naomi Watts, who gave a startling Oscar-worthy performance in last year’s Mullholland Drive, plays Seattle journalist Rachel Keller out to put her investigative skills to work. Anyway, things become mighty spooky after the saddened Rachel and her son Aidan (David Dorfman) attend a young relative’s funeral service. As it turns out, Rachel’s deceased niece may have been a victim to some ominous videotape that she may have previously viewed. It all seems so cozy to be just a mere coincidence; Rachel somehow discovered that there were a handful of other youngsters that got hold of this tape and as a result they all perished for their indiscretion in doing so. And what makes it so compelling in her mind is that these kids died at around 10 PM, exactly one week after they watched this dubious tape. And naturally being the professional reporter that she is in terms of her innate curiosity, the harried journalist decides to check out this villainous videotape for herself.

In the meanwhile, the film awkwardly morphs into The Sixth Sense territory when young Aidan starts to experience some chilling vibes that result in him hallucinating about daunting dark images that has the poor kid going out of his freakin’ mind. And to make matters worse, Aidan stumbles across the treacherous tape left unguarded by his mother and as a result, the traumatized tyke begins his downward spiral into desperate proportions. Oh yeah, there’s some theme to all this madness that routinely occurs. After Rachel watched the tape, the phone rings and a very strange voice echoes the phrase “seven days”. In other words, if Rachel cannot resolve the crazy clues behind this tape fiasco in a week, she and Aidan will be history in the making.

The Ring is a nonsensical, nightmarish and relentlessly infuriating supernatural thriller that has a good time chewing up its own atmospheric synergy. Verbinski (The Mexican, The Ritual) patches together this glossy spookfest with some fine filmmaking techniques that overcome the otherwise ridiculous and familiar material that’s shamelessly lifted from other frightful fare that range from the aforementioned The Sixth Sense to The Others

This morose movie does contain some well-acted and spunky performances despite the sketchy feel of the perfunctory plotline. Kudos definitely is to be attributed to the crisp cinematography by Bojan Bazelli (Kalifornia). The editing endeavors courtesy of Craig Wood help the film’s continuous creepiness. Overall, The Ring has its miscues and one can say that the twists and turns are on the borderline of predictability. But Ehren Kruger’s script does show some promise even though it treads on some thin ice at times (particularly the children-in-peril angle that feels kind of exploitive). Still, this Ring is worth wrapping around your little finger of twitchy suspense.