if you want gore, you picked the wrong movie

Rating: 7/10 (28 December 2003)

First, i have to mention that I haven't seen the original. So perhaps my view on this picture will be a tad more objective 'cos I won't compare it to Ringu.
-might contain spoilers (and a lot of typo's)-
Either way, i heard a lot of good things about this movie, so with high expectations I decided to watch it on a dark, cold winter night. The movie starts with two teens on the bed, talking bout this urban legend. My first impression was: oh god, not again. Now a killer with a mask will jump from behind the curtains and stab them both to death, right? Well..no!
From the beginning there's this eery atmosphere and with a few (cheap) tricks the tension starts to rise till the end of this intro which leaves us with a riddle of what exactly happened. I almost pissed my pants after this first scene so the intro really set the mood.
The story continues at a comfortable pace. Nothing drastic happens, but there's this constant creepy atmosphere and simple things like that red tree at the cabin, the bleeding noses, terrific camera-angles and loud sounds (read: noise) that just make you want to grab a pillow and hold it in front of your eyes.
Till the 7th day, I can't tell anything bad or annoying bout this movie. But then they start messing things up. Rachel falls into the well, Samara grabs her hand and Rachel gets this vision of how things went. This part looks great actually, but then Samara comes to the surface. Bad move lads. Till that particular event, 'Samara' was a huge mystery: was samara really evil, how did she look like, etc. But here everything about this mystery goes to waste when Samara floats to the surface in, what seemed to me, a clumsy way.
Well, from then on they think everything is solved and the party goes home. If they had ended the film here, that would have been a damn lame ending. So they put on this extra chapter in which the truth becomes clear to Rachel and the poor lad dies in a great scene (remember the fly that left the screen? Wow!) It's a nice turn in the story, but it feels artificial. They could have done a lot better job to add this extra part.
Also, there are quite many `what if's like `what if the TV is really small so samara can't crawl out' or `what if you're in this forest on the 7th with no TVs around you' etc.
Despite the mediocre ending, I give this movie 7/10.
PS: Nice acting from Naomi Watts