By Courtney L. Woods
Movie Review: The Ring
Gore, horrific violence, and blood and guts: all components of a typical “scary movie.” In the past few years, slasher films received theatrical CPR, then became laughable farces devoid of any sort of plot, let alone scariness. However, there are few films that break the mold altogether, like The Sixth Sense and The Others. The Ring is one of those few films that can scare the living daylights out of you and still earn a PG-13 rating. Director Gore Verbinski has artfully remade a Japanese cult hit into the best Halloween film of the year.
Naomi Watts (Mulholland Drive) is Rachel Keller, a journalist, single mother, and aunt to a sixteen-year-old girl who mysteriously dies of fright. Rumors emerge about a video tape: seven days after you watch it, you die. In her true journalistic cynicism, Rachel goes to the cabin where her niece saw the tape, finds it, and watches it herself. She doesn’t really understand the gravity of the video and what the consequences may be; that is, until the tape is over and the phone rings. The voice at the other end is small, wispy and haunting. All it says is, “Seven days.”
With a death sentence looming over her, Rachel studies the tape over and over, using her seven days to investigate the origins of the tape and the identities of the people it features. The images themselves are nightmarish and the odd sounds send chills. It’s like a Tool video, only scarier and in black and white. The first image is that of a glowing ring followed by a little girl with long hair covering her face, lighthouses, horses, a lone ladder and a solitary chair. All imagery is explained in the film, as well as a backstory, an explanation for the ghost story and the wrath that the ghost has.
While the movie isn’t terribly gory, it is super-creepy and there are some pretty gross scenes, like the faces of the people who get frightened to death, gross scenes involving a spooked horse and a medical electrode, and a very disturbing death by electrocution. All in all, the film is disturbing on many levels. Many in the audience covered their heads with jackets and their hands, even grown men. Toes curl and hairs raise in this film. Like one audience member said, “It’s the first movie I really wanted to see, but that I didn’t want to watch.”
Watts has no doubt sealed her fate as a big movie star. Let’s face it, she more than looks like Nicole Kidman. She’s a face-biter; she could be her twin sister. It’s eerie. It’s a quiet movie all in all; even the haunted video tape is made eerier by the sheer silence of it, except for the aforementioned odd sounds. Those sounds haunt dreams and turn them into nightmares. The landscape of the film is drab and psychologically terrifying.
That’s what most scary films lack: psychological terror. Sure, visual gore and mutilation can scare you, but when it messes with your head, it’s a whole other experience. The Ring is a great movie; however, it is so disturbing that you probably will never want to watch it again.
CARDINAL GRADE: A
