Scary and eerie with what you'd expect out of a film like this but The Ring is an overall failure of forced horror.

Rating: 6/10 (9 September 2007)

The idea that you watch a video tape, receive a phone call and then die within a week of engaging in these two events is an interesting idea but at the same time, not that scary  what is it that's going to cause you to die that is so scary you can't get medical or authoritarian help? But that's what The Ring is; a film that doesn't rely on character logistics or 'what should be done in that situation' but rather relies on eeriness and uncanny things to get across its scares.
I will not deny that The Ring is scary because it is a very unnerving and creepy film  although there's no violence or gore, I was still finding myself looking away from the screen once or twice but I realised afterwards that this was due to the fact I had absolutely no idea what it was I was dealing with in the film. If you were to make a ten second film of someone opening a creaky old door, going inside to a pitch black room whilst all the time having eerie music playing over the events and really dark lighting over the images, you'll probably find your audience looking away merely because they don't know who any one is, why what's happening IS happening and what's going to pop out at them. This is The Ring to a tee.
The Ring is a horror film that takes a detective route and the character of Rachel Keller (Watts) takes on the detective role in a rather tired way. The introduction to the video tape in question is a very brief and rather crude way of setting up the events  no, I don't believe that fate would have one girl mention 'the tape' literally minutes before the other girl would succumb to its curse and no, I don't believe that characters at the funeral would be able to free roam their way through the bedroom where the death happened since it should be a crime scene, but there is no help in the form of authoritarian figures, remember? This is a world without police and the FBI to investigate strange occurrences which is ironic because at times, The Ring does feel like an episode of The X Files.
Once it's established that this tape exists, The Ring turns into a film that relies on its breaking of everyday rules to crank up suspense. I mentioned the bedroom/crime scene occurrence which shouldn't have even happened because people wouldn't have been allowed up there. Also, the car ferry scene where a horse bolts from its carriage due to Keller's presence; again, it shouldn't have happened because once a car ferry starts moving, passengers aren't allowed on the car deck. As it was, that scene was self-motivated by the character of Keller (who could've stepped away when the horse got agitated) and turned out to be rather unpleasant.
The film consists of Keller and her sidekick Noah Clay (Henderson) attempting to solve the case of the tape whilst avoiding the uncanny events that happen in-between every now and again. These include the horse/ferry scene, the taking of a fly from the video, nose bleeds, flashing images from the video itself and a creepy Sixth Sense-come-Omen type male child who the film relies on to get most of the uncomfortable atmosphere across; needless to say it works but on a basic level. Why anything's actually scary in The Ring is because you will not have too much of an idea to what is going on. The confusing plot that only really becomes clear in the final fifteen minutes merely toils on your mind more and more as each eerie scene goes past being able to cope with the scares and with the working out of the plot is hard work. The fact the film makers have a license to include just about anything in the form of scares doesn't help too much.
I found the finale of the film a little disturbing but only because Keller involves her child in a way that I didn't think was necessary in fact The Ring ends rather downbeat and more like a tragedy when it becomes clear what the motivation of the tape actually is. The Ring has its scares and maybe two jumps at the most but this is very much a case of seen it - don't need to see it again.