The Ring (2002)

Having never seen the original Japanese version “Ringu”, my mind was fairly open to this American remake since I really had nothing to compare it to. Super foxy actress Naomi Watts plays a reporter named Rachel who is investigating the strange death of her sister’s teenage daughter. Rachel’s learns from some of her deceased niece’s friends that they attribute their friend’s death to a mysterious tape that leads to the viewer’s death seven days after seeing the tapes bizarre content. Intrigued, Rachel tracks down the tape and soon learns after watching it that there just may be something to the bizarre story, and oops, her young son and former lover have also watched the tape, resulting in Rachel having seven days to get to the bottom of the mysterious tape and it’s origins before they all die. Simple huh?

“The Ring” is somewhat of a hit and miss type of film. For every one or two things that I liked about the flick, there was at least double the amount of things that I disliked. Yes, I’m picky when it comes to my horror. What I liked most of all: Naomi Watts. Besides being easy on the eyes, Ms. Watts shows everyone she’s fully capable of carrying a film on her shoulders. While I never really bought the “investigative reporter” angle, her character displays both a sense of toughness and vulnerability that really caught my eye. Good job. Secondly, the film really carries a sense of underlying dread to it. Your always waiting for some weird, trippy shite to go down and when you least expect it, it does. There are some fairly creepy moments such as the unveiling of the deceased niece’s creepy as corpse (brrr), to the tape’s trippy contents itself, and back again. Director Gore Verbinski delivers completely on the visual side of things as his film is loaded with tons of surreal images spliced with some fairly creepy sound effects. Atmospherically speaking, this puppy is a winner. Story wise however…

Negatively speaking, I really had problems with the overall story. Things just became way to confusing at certain points as I found myself repeatedly saying aloud, “what is going on here?” For some reason this never bothers me in an Argento or Fulci flick, but somehow that’s different you know? The main bugaboo here is that it seems like the film wants to throw so many subplots and twists at the audience to say “see how clever we are?” For instance, exactly why is Samara evil and killing people, and how did she get this ability? She apparently had it prior to her death (oops, ignore that plot giveaway) so why is she the way she is? How was Rachel able to pick that fly off the t.v. screen, why does the ex boyfriend live after seven days then die, why can Rachel’s son talk to the ghost, etc.. To sum it all up, it was just a little too much to completely digest and I felt like the filmmakers were trying to come across a “look how clever we can be” attitude. I’m curious as to whether or not some of the same story elements are in the original.

Overall this one was a bit of a disappointment to us here at Apocalypse Headquarters. While actually watching the film you are intrigued, it’s after the credits start to roll however that you begin to feel somewhat cheated. It’s time now to track down a copy of “Ringu” and compare the two flicks. “The Ring” is not bad as far as Hollywood horror is concerned and according to fans of the original it’s a decent remake, but still, I just sort of had a “blah” feel about the whole thing. Maybe if we had more shots of Ms. Watts in that black sports bra and panties outfit…oh, never mind.