As far as modern horror thrillers go, this one is pretty damn good...

Rating: 8/10 (19 October 2002)

For a schlocky Hollywoodized piece of mass marketed horror, "The Ring" is shockingly competent, effective, and artistic. The director, Gore Verbinski (of "Mouse Hunt" fame) is by all means a hack, but a pretty astute and artistic hack who lays on plenty of stunning and haunting imagery that makes the film seem more important and artistic than it really is. The star, Naomi Watts, anchors the film with a performance that gets better as the film moves along (in fact, the whole film seems to get better as it moves along and almost entirely hinges on her performance) and shows that her award-winning turn in "Mulholland Drive" was no fluke. If the film is a hit, this should catapult her into the A-list of fine actresses.
The first fifteen minutes of the film play like a "Scream" knock-off, but don't let that discourage you. That is merely a savvy ploy (great marketing but bad film-making) to lure in the teen-age crowd that grew up with Wes Craven's craptacular "Scream" films as their main reference for great horror. Judging by the shrieks I heard from the teeny-boppers in the audience, this film should get a lot of repeat business from them and I suspect could become this generation's "Poltergeist." Rest assured, that mature audience who grew up with "The Exorcist," "Rosemary's Baby," and "The Changeling," will be rewarded in the end with a highly competent horror/mystery film that is much closer in relation to those great 1970's horror films than anything Wes Craven ever made us suffer through. I also appreciate how in the end, the movie could've easily turned into a melodramatic knock-off of the "Sixth-Sense," but proudly stuck to it's genre guns and creeped us out with one last blast.
Granted, many of the artistic shots are taken straight from "The Shining" (with rain replacing the snow), and there are many other "homages" to be found...everything from "Psycho" to "The Blair Witch Project." This could make the film fun for some film buffs (I especially like the cursed videotape that played like a German expressionist film) while infuriating others. Take this review then with a grain of salt, for I have not seen the Japanese original, and I am also one who thought Neil Jordan's poorly received "In Dreams" was a great horror thriller.