It DOES receive a "ringing" endorsement...

Rating: 10/10 (1 November 2002)

After spending Halloween night with the Scream trilogy (again) in my college dorm, a friend and I decided we were looking for something better, so we tried The Ring. It was a purely impulse movie choice--we'd heard some good things but knew little about it. My recommendation to you: Go See It.
The film's basis is a video tape that brings about the death of its viewers within 7 days. It's a decent enough scary movie idea--you know that right away the main character is going to watch the video tape and then have 7 days (or 2 hours of film time) to solve the mystery of why the tape is so deadly. So it's already granted that not everything in this film will be a surprise to you--sometimes the people you expect to die do, and the bad things you expect to happen do. But don't be fooled into thinking you've got it all figured out--it's more likely than not that you don't, and there are no false climaxes--there's really only one.
The plot is well constructed--my friend and I who both delight in finding plot holes and poorly constructed scripts tried very hard to be disappointed with the film, or catch something the editors missed, but we couldn't. It's a good mystery, and halfway through the film you will want to stay solely to figure out all the pieces of the puzzle. While, on the surface, the killer and the victims may not seem connected, the storyline actually does draw a line between the two, the video being the vehicle. It's all explained, it's all there on film--the movie AND the movie within the movie.
Technically, it's a beautiful movie. Landscape shots are very well planned out, and it (thankfully) lacks in cheap special effects, dripping blood and gore (total gore time likely comprises 1/64 of the film), and poorly done computer miracles. The Pacific Northwest was beautifully utilized, the sets were well done, the cinematography was excellent...I could go on and on.

This is not your average Halloween slasher-pic scary movie. It's Hitchcockian in nature in that it's based more on suspense and solving the mystery than on teenagers in ghost masks jumping out with large knives. For the Hitchcock fan, check out the in-film homage to Rear Window.

The Ring is a well-thought out, beautifully filmed, intellectual, scary movie. Definitely give it a watch, it's worth spending the evening afraid to turn on your television.