The Ring (2002)

The Ring is an American remake of the Japanese horror film Ringu, and in keeping with general American style, turned a spare, suspenseful film into an over-the-top, overly explained, rather clichéd one. Like the original, it's about a reporter investigating a videotape that apparently kills its watchers within seven days. Her niece mysteriously dies after watching the videotape, which piques her curiosity, if not really her compassion. You never get a sense that Watts had any emotional connection to her niece, or for that matter, anyone else.

The tape itself is gratuitously weird and includes lots of iconic horrific images, if not many actual clues to the mystery. The investigation she undertakes is very Hollywood, lots of breaking into file rooms and destroying a poor archiver's hard work by throwing files into chaos. The actual story behind the tape is much more complicated and less realistic than the story in the original film. Plus, the reporter's son, who was sweet and sympathetic in the original, is needlessly creepy.  It's as if he's doing his best Haley Joel Osment and you just want to say, honey, this ain't The Sixth Sense. Not by a long shot.

Although The Ring is not a terrible movie, it certainly suffers in comparison with the original. Where Ringu had sympathetic, complex characters with complicated relationships, The Ring offers only character traits and clichéd relationships. Also, The Ring attempts to do too much, with its unnecessarily complicated plot twists and half-assed indictment of tv and motherhood. Also, there is much gratuitous animal and human violence, none of which seems to bother our intrepid heroine. However, it was fairly popular in the theater and many people seemed to find it genuinely scary, so something in it must appeal to people. There are some genuinely spooky bits, but it shows too much and is unnecessarily complicated and violent. (2.5/5)