Bringing Down the House Review

by Susan Granger (ssg722 AT aol DOT com)
October 11th, 2002
Susan Granger's review of "The Ring" (DreamWorks)
    With a timely Halloween release, "The Ring" is the best horror film since "The Sixth Sense," "The Changeling" and "Psycho." Based on the Japanese hit "Ringu," the suspenseful story revolves around a supernatural videotape filled with Gothic nightmarish images. According to an urban legend, if you watch it, the phone will ring and then, a week later, you will die. Ridiculous, perhaps, but when her teenage niece suddenly dies, a curious Seattle reporter investigates in a race against time. Is this a fiendish hoax or hideous hallucination? Evidence leads her first to a creaky mountain cabin, then on a profoundly disturbing ferry ride to a desolate lighthouse on Moesko Island near a decrepit horse farm that's bedeviled by the malicious ghost of a little girl.
    Like Alfred Hitchcock and other horror masters, director Gore Verbinski realizes that what an audience imagines is far more frightening than what's on the screen, so much of the bizarre mystery is suggested by Ehren Kruger's screenplay, rather than graphically depicted. Credit photographer Bojan Bazelli and production designer Tom Duffield for the gloomy aura and stylized, surreal imagery and composer Hans Zimmer for the ominous music that sets the creepy, malevolent tone. (Admittedly, I did not see Hideo Nakata's "Ringu" so I am reviewing this remake strictly on its own merits.) Wide-eyed, compelling Naomi Watts, so memorable in "Mulholland Drive," drives the plot with enormous intensity, along with Martin Henderson as her estranged husband and David Dorfman as their young son, who's also been transfixed by the perplexing videotape. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Ring" is an eerie, enigmatic 8. Sure, it's an implausible gimmick movie - but how gullible are you? I suspect "The Ring" will haunt you.

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