Warning, Watching Videos May Damage Your Health (The Ring (DVD))

Member Name: merv

Product:	The Ring (DVD)
Date:	03/04/03 (172 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Pacy, Tense, Horror/thriller/mystery combined

Disadvantages: A tad far-fetched

Three weeks ago my regular Saturday afternoon football was postponed until Sunday because of that odd shaped ball game! My wife wanted me to finish the decorating, but my son was over for the weekend and insisted on dragging me off to the Cinema to feed his penchant for horror movies.

The last time he persuaded me to go and watch a horror film it was ‘Dog Soldiers’ which I thought was more funny than frightening. This was definitely of the scary variety, though not as frightening as the newspaper reviews had led me to believe. Having said that, it did have its tense moments and was definitely worth seeing.

The terror begins when the television is disrupted by a loud burst of static and a 'no-signal' snowstorm together with the sort of white noise you hear when you disconnect the aerial. Believe me, after watching this film that moment will tunnel deep into your sub conscious and next time it happens in the comfort of your own home, it will prickle the hairs on the back of your head.

The film is director Gore Verbinski’s remake of the incredibly popular Japanese film that was supposedly the scariest movie in the world. I’ve not seen the original, which I understand is available on video but I’ve read that this stays fairly true to the plot with a slightly different emphasis to suit the US market. I’ve also read that as in Japan, it is intended to make this into a trilogy.

Star of the film is the beautiful Naomi Watts who plays reporter Rachel Keller who gets involved in the action after she discovers that her niece and her friends died under gruesome and inexplicable circumstances. They died as a consequence of watching a cursed video tape which shows a sequence of black and white shadowy and surreal images, including – a man looking through a window, a wooden chair, a ladder, a women brushing her long hair whilst gazing into a mirror, and a vivid circle of light which I presume i
s the ring after which the film title gets its name.

The curse of the video tape is like a 21st century version of the Gorgon out of Greek mythology. Moments after the video is finished a mysterious phone call informs the viewers that they have exactly 7 days to live. Death occurs one week later, after a second phone call, the TV springs into life, the ring appears and that’s it – curtains. The premonition turns out to be true.

Rachel of course goes looking for the video, and rather foolishly in my opinion views it (as one does!). At first she dismisses it as an elaborate hoax, but as she begins to experience hallucinations and weird phenomena, e.g. her face becomes distorted in photographs, her belief in the video’s curse grows. The clock steadfastly ticks away, and the end of the seven days fast approaches. In that time Rachel must discover the dark secret of the curse or suffer the same fate as her niece's. Her race against the clock in an attempt to unravel the mystery intensifies when first her ex husband, then her young son also view the tape.

I won’t tell you any more about the plot, other than there’s a tremendous twist at the end (which had to be explained to me!)and a pretty horrific revelation.

Any more and it would definitely spoil the film for you, but I will tell you why I think it is such a good film well worth going to see.

Firstly, it is visually pleasing and very well directed with excellent cinematography, which put me in mind of ‘Deliverance’. Many of the outdoor shots are in the rain for some reason, yet this adds to the gloomy suspense. There is one scene involving a horse running amok on a ferry, which is particularly good.

Secondly, the acting performances - Naomi Watts who was in Mulholland Drive is excellent and her growing fear as the movie progresses is very well paced, one of the best female performances I’ve seen for a while. She
’s clearly an actress we’re going to see a lot more of in the future.

Films such as this are often let down by the young actor playing the precocious child role, but not in this movie David Dorfman, who looks like a bit like the Culkin lad, performs really well as Rachel's son Aidan who perceives odd things in ‘Sixth Sense’ fashion. For someone so young, he is incredibly believable, his lack of expression in some scenes speaks volumes.

The other supporting actors are also impressive. Martin Henderson as Noah, plays the archetypical ex-husband role well, and Brian Cox and Daveigh Chase excel in their relatively small cameo roles. My son tells me that Daveigh Chase is the voice of Lilo (out of Disney's Lilo and Stitch). This role couldn’t be further from that – frighteningly menacing.

The only criticism I would have is the ease with which they carry out the investigation, without any hitches at all, but there again, if it were true to real life it would be pretty boring and their enquiries would be clogged up with administrative red tape. Suspending belief goes with the territory in a movie such as this.

The movie is more than just a horror movie. It is a good old-fashioned thriller, a twisted tragic tale, moody and tense, very pacy and full of suspenseful and frightening moments, a cross between ‘The Exorcist’ and ‘The Others’. It is creepy, atmospheric, and disturbing with a shocking and unnerving ending. Not to my mind as frightening as ‘The Shining’, which for some reason scared the death out of me, but pretty chilling nevertheless. Definitely worth going to see and a must for the Video/DVD collection when it is eventually released.

Incidently, I went to see the match on the following Sunday, Wrexham 0 – Darlington 0 and that was something of a horror show too!

Summary: