The Ring

What's the Plot?

Another urban legend? A videotape filled with nightmarish images and after it’s been watched the viewer, wherever they are, receives a phone call foretelling their death in exactly seven days. Newspaper reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts), doesn’t believe in such a story until one of her young relatives dies in mysterious circumstances along with her friends exactly one week after watching such a tape. Curious, Rachel tracks down the video and confident in her belief in the absurdity of it all, watches it...and then receives the ‘death’ call, quickly realising that this is no urban legend. Enlisting the help of her ex-husband Noah (Martin Henderson), Rachel has just seven days to unravel the mystery of the tape and save her, and her son’s, lives.

The Review

Remake. The word normally sends shivers down most movie-goers spines. Think The Planet of the Apes, and the forthcoming The Italian Job. Need I say anymore? What you think of this US version of The Ring will depend greatly on whether you’ve seen the original Japanese ‘trouser messing’ modern classic from 1998. This new stab at the TV terror premise isn’t a patch on the original but, as remakes go, it’s not all that bad. Thankfully, it hasn’t been turned into a ‘boobs and bloodbath’ flick that Hollywood normally delivers for the teen market. The Ring is a more sinister, chilling, thoughtful and downright bloody eerie dish than those others.

Of course, watching it at home would complete the overall fear, but a darkened cinema should still suffice. Watts, who looks to fill the ‘Next Big Thing’ category, in no way harms her escalating reputation as a woman who realises that she only has a week left to live. When her desperation increases, due to the fact that her son (who looks like he’s come straight out of The Shining or The Omen) also watches the video, it’s Watts who holds the film together. Which is lucky, because the fatal flaw of this remake is that it’s strayed from the plot in ways that feel unnecessary and confusing. Even though his presence is powerful, Brian Cox’s role as the husband/father connected to the females’ present in the video tape is pointless, slowing down the main plotline and pace and not furthering the story.

Although disturbing and graphically well-executed, the horse and ferry scene feels too out of place with the rest of the movie (but watch out for the subliminal ‘ring’ at the end of the sequence!). Director Gore Verbinski, whose previous movies include Mouse Hunt and The Mexican, isn’t who you’d first think of as a director of a thriller/ horror movie, but he does well to try and keep away from the Scream and I Know What You Did Last Summer cliches. Eventually thought, and at the most crucial point, he relies on the Hollywood trapping of over-reliance of computer generated images (CGI). The original’s most skin-crawling, pant-wetting sequence is now served up as cold and lifeless as last week’s leftovers, using CGI instead of simple but effective trick-camera photography. See it, then see the original.

First Timers

Watchers of the original