A Complex, Multi-layered Chiller (the simple-minded need not apply)

Rating: 10/10 (31 October 2002)

It appears only time will redeem The Ring. The response to it reminds me of the hoopla surrounding Blair Witch Project: mixed reviews from critics, a pleased audience, followed by a swift and bitter backlash.
Like Blair Witch, film history will no doubt be more fair, since again we find audiences going into a movie expecting an American horror film, like I did, and coming out with something rich and layered.
Unfortunately for an audience used to simplistic, straightforward stories, The Ring becomes something much more complex. It's not a linear, Aristotelian story. It's very Eastern in its use of circular time, of yin-and-yang. Everything is not neatly wrapped-up at the end. It leaves you with a myriad of questions and a bad taste in your mouth.
That bad taste is why it took my friends and I multiple viewings and several discussions to decide if we liked The Ring or not. It begs for -- and holds up under -- multiple viewings. This is a movie for careful viewers. Important details and lines are delivered only once, and even then they are mysterious. Certain elements have double- and sometimes even triple-meanings. Your understanding of it hinges on being able to interpret symbols.
In other words: there's a lot of figuring out to do. What critics are calling plot holes I call vagueness. A plot hole means that the explanation is just not there: it's a goof. In The Ring, it's all there, it's just not all-spelled-out. There's a difference.
If you're the type of person who likes your movies wrapped in pretty paper and handed to you in a bow, do not bother investing time in The Ring. This is not a cheap horror movie. The horror may be choppy, jumpy, maybe even old. But the meanings are very subtle, and the meanings are where the meat of this movie lie.
And to be fair to the movie, lots of it is damn scary, too.
I don't think anything like this has been seen on the American screen before. This is a higher level of film-making. Bojan Bazelli's cinematography, which does not deserve to be an afterthought here, is masterful...this is one of the best movies ever made. 10/10.