Nonsense played straight

Rating: 6/10 (10 April 2005)

Morose color schemes, oddball characters and lots of rain apparently make a popular and successful film. While the Ring is an interesting view (once) if you look too closely at this film you'll realize that it's a huge pile of codswhallop that will never add up no matter how much you force it. Let's disassemble...
A girl is born to a stray woman but possessed with the soul of a vengeful spirit in need of love and a mother but never in need of sleep. The child is named Samara and adopted by horse breeders Mr. and Mrs. Morgan. But because Samara is cursed with freakyness the horses go crazy and commit suicide while others fail to breed. As punishment for being this way the Morgans trap her in a big attic in a barn. Not content with this they smack her on the back of the head with a rock and chuck her down a well. Their suicides soon follow.
Many years later Samara, using her freaky powers at the bottom of the well, somehow brings into existence a video tape featuring a freaky student film of imagery of her freaky life. Anyone who watches this tape dies 7 days later. Which doesn't make sense either as the first person who watched it wouldn't know they were going to die. And neither would the second. So how the urban legend surrounding it got started is a mystery. And why 7 days? Why not right away? Does she want the tape to be deciphered and to be found?
A journalist called Rachel investigates the tape, luckily making a copy-ridding herself of the 7-day curse and unravels Samara's freaky life. Her body is found and laid to rest properly. BUT THIS IS A BAD THING! Somehow. It's never really explained why it is but other than the uttering of cryptic dialogue such as 'You let the dead get in'.
But bad things don't really happen after this anyway, other than more people watching the video tape. And then everything's okay right? We might as well fade out now...