Very disturbing

Rating: Null/10 (19 March 2003)

I see that some people have been really hard on this film because there was apparently a lot of hype about it. Well, I rented it on DVD expecting it to be an average post-Scream horror movie that would be entertaining in a mindless sort of way. Not having a clue that it was a remake probably helped. Anyway, I was completely wrong.
Say what you want about the story or the plot or whatever, but this movie could make it on visuals alone, in my opinion. Whoever put this together seems to have a very good understanding of what sort of images will cause a knot to rise up in your chest and hot chills to run down your spine, and in that respect, The Ring works beautifully. I'm still getting chills and I watched it over an hour ago. It's likely to stay with me for days. I'm not someone who scares easily, and I've experienced a lot of horror movies, including Italian greats like Suspiria. Few films have affected me the way this one has. The Exorcist is really the only one I can think of right now.
I think a lot of people try to intellectualize horror films way too much. The main reason horror films are made is to play on that instinctual, gut-level reaction we have to the abnormal and the unnatural. For the most part, true horror doesn't really try to stimulate your intellect. It's goal is to reduce you to a quivering puddle of human jelly who's scared to get up and go to the bathroom in the middle of the night. If the movie succeeds at that, then you can always use your imagination to fill in whatever gaps you notice when your heart calms down and you're able to think rationally. That's how I like to look at it, anyway. I don't WANT to have a film about the supernatural explain every little detail to me. It takes all the fun out of it. Kills the mystery.
Anyway, if you're here, at this point you know what the movie is about, so I won't describe the plot here. I'll just list some of the things that scared me the most. POSSIBLE SPOILERS - SKIP TO NEXT PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN IT YET!
The image that is most haunting to me right now is the little girl's hair moving up out of the well, seemingly of it's own will, before she climbs out. It's almost as gut-wrenching as the famous head-spinning scene in The Exorcist. Just completely unnatural. Something inside you just screams, "That's not supposed to be happening, make it stop!" I am trying not to freak out right now as I'm remembering it. I don't think I'll be getting much sleep tonight. The girl's slow lurching towards the television screen as you're hoping the guy will have the good sense to grab a chair and smash the screen before she gets there. The final glimpse at the girl's water-logged, bloated face after she comes out of the screen. The distorted and collapsed faces of her victims is also terribly disturbing. The video of her in the hospital, just sitting silently with her hair obscuring her face, or pacing her cell, never sleeping. Her lonely little loft in the barn. The look on the little boy's face when he asks his mother why she helped the girl get out of the dark place after you thought it was all going to end happily is also quite a blow. The blurred faces of future victims in photographs is effectively creepy. This stuff alone is worth the price of the DVD.
The entire movie is just that, creepy. The beautiful scenery of the gloomy countryside, the stark black and white video and the flashbacks as the pieces of the puzzle fall into place, the music...it all just gives you a tense, uneasy feeling as you wait for the next haunting image to pop out at you, one that may be so frightening that you can't bear to watch anymore. And that always makes a more intriguing horror film, to me at least, than those films that try to make you jump with loud noises and false scares, and if that doesn't work, outright gross-out. This movie does have a few moments that make you go "What are they thinking?", but that's to be expected. All-in-all, I think this film is a work of art in it's own right, and I recommend it to everyone. It is definitely one of the best horror films to come out of Hollywood in a while.