...grows more and more absurd.

Rating: 6/10 (4 December 2002)

This is one of those movies that really could have been among the greats in the genre like The Exorcist. The Ring establishes one of the best horror atmospheres that I have ever experienced and it even delivers on the scares that it promises. But, aside from all that is everything that is unforgivable. The entire movie just grows more and more absurd; thought I cannot give any specific examples without making this review a big spoiler, the movie either fails to explain the origins and purpose of the tape and all the mystery surrounding it or gives an explanation that is something more than absurd. Still, I concede that atmosphere is probably the most effective element in a horror movie and The Ring succeeds beyond my wildest dreams on that level. There are no showy special effects, but instead subtle little touches like an eerie cabin near a misty and spooky forest, a quiet farming town with an aura of uneasy silence surrounding it, and most importantly, a woman who changes from an everyday news reporter to a tense and fearful person afraid for the lives of everyone she loves.
Still, one of the biggest gripes I had with this movie was the videotape itself. There are a lot of people who seem to think that it was creative and extremely frightening; I am not one of those people. Whoever was responsible for the creation of the videotape footage seemed to create a montage by just throwing together a bunch of individually interesting images that had little effect, especially in the long run. When we see some of the objects on the tape in real life, The Ring wants us to say "wow," instead we are left muttering anything but flattery. The tape is the central piece of the movie, something that the audience yearns to see and be frightened by. To me the piecing together of "artsy" images has become a cliché and an all too easy way out.
Another big problem is the ending, or rather, the lack of a good one. There are a few points before the actual end that I thought the movie should have ended; granted that any of the other ending points would have been more typical, any other ending would have stopped the continual onslaught of brainless explanations and commercially injected meaning. There is one point where Watts says, "I want to go home," where I definitely would have liked to see the movie end. Yes we've seen it before and yes it's the easy way out that I was complaining the tape footage took, but not everything can be original and not everything has to be original. Horror movies and thrillers these days are still all trying to duplicate the huge plot twist of The Sixth Sense, and the eventual monetary success that the film enjoyed. At some point there has to be a concession that Shyamalan's picture was beyond what almost all people in Hollywood are capable of in terms of its shock value.
Luckily, making up for the script's flaws is the talent involved in the cast, especially in Naomi Watts. Her performance as Rachael is often the saving grace of this movie. She transforms otherwise painful moments into something emotionally compelling or frightening. At first look, Watts is the typical attractive female that all horror movies like to showcase either in the main character or in one of the side characters. But she transcends the typical female in a horror movie role and shows us her character's depth and emotions. She starts out as reporter investigating her niece's death to a woman with seven days to live and a son and ex-husband with only a day or so more than her.
In the end The Ring is similar to one of this weekend's other releases, Abandon. Both show us some elements of brilliance that are rare in movies of their type, both are bad movies in the end. The Ring is a movie that could have offered more than a few scares and a cool look, but alas, the writer failed to write with logic and reason as is often the case in Hollywood.