The Ring (2002)
Directed by Gore Verbinski
Been catching up on a bunch of horror classics lately, so now is a good a time as any to talk about The Ring! Eventually I do plan to watch the original Ringu, but I’ve heard a lot of good things about The Ring, and who doesn’t love the whole “You will die in seven days,” bit? So time for me to finally watch one of the best known American adaptations of famous Japanese horror movies.
The Story!
The Ring follows Rachel Keller who, after the death of her niece, investigates a mysterious videotape, that supposedly causes anyone who watches it to die after a week, which may be a clue as to how she died. Her investigation takes her, and her ex-lover Noah, on a journey to several creepy destinations as they try to piece together the story of what the videotape is, why it does what it does, and how to stop it. The stakes are raised even further when Rachel’s young son, Aiden, accidentally watches the tape. I don’t want to get much further into the story though, because, as a sort of detective movie, any further details would be spoilers.
Positives.
The positives: I liked parts of the story, especially things having to do with the mysterious tape. There’s a good urban legend vibe to the first act and once you learn what the tape is and where it came from, I think that story all works. The tape itself is one of my favorite parts of the movie, you see it a few times and it is appropriately creepy, both in content of what is on the tape and also in context of where it came from.
That Oh So Mysterious Tape
The mysterious tape at the core of the story highlights everything that works about The Ring. The Ring isn’t overloaded with creepy moments, but whenever spooky things happen the visuals are generally quite good, especially during the opening and the climax. The design of the monster/ghoul is quite nice, very simple and effective. And luckily The Ring exercises restraint and doesn’t overexpose its monster moments.
What Doesn’t Work.
Unfortunately, the movie isn’t all about the tape. In between the opening and climax, which I quite enjoyed, there’s a good hour of the movie that really didn’t work for me. Although the backstory of the tape and the curse is interesting, the process of learning what it is isn’t, largely because the characters are all kind of bland. They aren’t terrible characters, but I never felt anything for them and that made it difficult for me to become invested in what should have been a tense race against the clock. Part of that, I think, has to do with the nature of the curse.
That Curse IS The Best Part, But Also A Huge Risk.
The curse that is the crux of the story is pretty creepy, but it’s also where all the problems seem to come from. Conceptually, the idea of a cursed tape existing that if you watch it a disturbing ghost will find and kill you, is a good idea but in order to make that work as a movie idea, you need a strong cast of characters who the audience really connects to. Without that connection, you can’t get invested in these people trying to solve the mystery, you just want to know the conclusion and move on. I’m somewhat ashamed to admit that I was getting impatient during the movie and found it a bit difficult to focus on, primarily because The Ring is framed as a character driven movie but all the characters are stock characters whose interrelationships are never that important, and who don’t have a lot of emotional depth.
The Actual Filmmaking Is Pretty Decent.
I don’t think it’s a badly made movie, the performances are mostly fine to good especially from Naomi Watts, the cinematography is usually quite nice, there just isn’t anything there for these qualities to support. This is a really strange criticism I am about to give but I don’t think this should have been a feature length film. If this had been edited down to a twenty to thirty minute short film about Rachel learning about the tape and researching it, I don’t think it would have been any worse of a movie, and that would have saved me a lot of time.
Do I Recommend The Ring? Tough Question.
The Ring is one of the most difficult movies I’ve ever had to consider when thinking about whether or not to recommend it. There are a lot of things I like here, there are some good visuals, good atmosphere, nice performances, but there’s almost an equal number of things here that I disliked. The characters are pretty average and in a character driven movie that’s a very bad thing, especially when the film depends on the characters so much to drive the story forward. I’m glad I finally saw The Ring but I don’t think I’m able to recommend it for anyone else to watch. Honestly you could just go to Youtube and watch the cursed video from the film and get pretty much everything about it from there.
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