Bringing Down the House Review
by Laura Clifford (laura AT reelingreviews DOT com)October 8th, 2002
THE RING
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When reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts, "Mulholland Drive") honors her sister's request to discover the cause of her fifteen year old niece Katie's death, she could never imagine the evil she will encounter in director Gore Verbinski's ("The Mexican," "Mouse Hunt") remake of the 1998 Japanese horror classic, "The Ring."
Screenwriter Ehren Kruger ("Arlington Road," "Scream 3") attempts to remove some of the ambiguity of the original "Ringu" and in so doing makes the chilling story laughable. Verbinski, an odd choice to direct this project, gets some jolting visuals, but can't sustain the feeling of dread he achieves through the film's midpoint. Perhaps most disappointing is the pedestrian role Watts has chosen to follow up her breakthrough performance in Lynch's more disturbing film of last year.
The film begins identically to the original. Teenage Katie (Amber Tamblyn, TV's
"General Hospital") tells her buddy Becca (Rachael Bella, "A Little Princess") about an overnight trip to a cabin in the woods a week ago. Becca's interested in hearing about sexual activity, but Katie is frightened because of
a weird videotape the group watched there, which was followed by a phone call telling them they'd all die in 7 days. The phone rings. The two terrified girls make their way downstairs to answer - false alarm. Becca goes back upstairs and Katie gets a drink. The television comes on. Katie turns it off. It comes on again. Katie turns and screams - flash! Cut to Rachel and her young son Aidan (David Dorfman, "Bounce") dressing for a funeral.
Rachel discovers from Katie's friends that Becca is now in a mental hospital and that all the others who watched the tape have also died. She finds their cabin and the tape. She watches it (as, eerily, do we). She gets the phone call. She enlists the aid of ex-lover, Aidan's dad Noah (Martin Henderson, "Windtalkers"), a media specialist who also watches the tape despite
her warning. He doesn't believe the story until he spies himself in a store's
security monitor, his face distorted just as the cabin group's were in a photograph Rachel found. Now the two are in a race against time to uncover the tape's origins.
Even in "Ringu," the origins of the tape seem like they're coming from an unrelated story, but Hideo Nakata's film wedded chills with a melancholy feeling of loss. "The Ring" simply gets too literal, then goes overboard into outright ludicrousness.
An added subplot, involving horse breeding, provides for one of the film's more horrifying moments (animal lovers beware), but once that scene passes the film nose dives. Rachel waltzes into a (potentially dangerous) stranger's home and starts going through his belongings. A suicide is so over the top it's ridiculous. The cabin is absurdly and unnecessarily chosen to house the ring.
Verbinski didn't need to steal imagery from any other
movie than the one he was remaking, but nonetheless references to films such as "The Sixth Sense" and "Psycho" serve only to distance the audience. He does do a terrific job with that horse scene (beautifully edited by Craig Wood), the tape itself and visualization of all the victims (special effects makeup by Academy Award winner Rick Baker).
Watts has little to do here, although she and Henderson are fine. Dorfman, who looks like he belongs to the Culkin clan, overdoes the dark eyed stare. Brian Cox is inexplicably cast in a small role he should leave off his resume. Daveigh Chase, the voice of Lilo in "Lilo & Stitch," is a great ghoul.
While "The Ring" provides a few jolts, their effect doesn't linger. Find the original Japanese film for some real Halloween creeps.
C-
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