Boring

Rating: 5/10 (3 February 2005)

Never underestimate the ability of the most boring, to just plain bad, films to become big franchises. Now, I've seen 'Ringu', 'Ringu 2', 'Ring 0', and 'Rasen', and the only one I thought to be worthwhile was 'Ring 0: Basudei'. The others ranged from boring to just plain silly (I'm thinking 'Rasen' in particular here). I was apprehensive in watching 'The Ring', and thinking about how most remakes seem doomed to failure, what could 'The Ring' offer in entertainment value? In the end, it wasn't that bad. Of course, it wasn't that good either. It ended up being an amalgamation of 'Ringu', 'Ringu 2', with various Hitchcock moments thrown in and a sub-plot about horses thrown in, which leads me to: THE HORSES! WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE HORSES. I'm sorry, I just couldn't resist.
So, apart from the sub-plot about the horses, 'The Ring' is just another journalist investigating a cursed tape. I can't think of any other movie series that involves a cursed tape, so originality points would go there if there hadn't been five different versions of 'Ring' in Japan already. If I wanted to curse everyone with a tape, I'd just project onto the large-screens you see in city centres, allowing for maximum curse-age.
Apart from the lack of any scares for most of the movie, my biggest problem with 'The Ring' was the character of Aidan. You know who he reminds me of? The kid from 'The Sixth Sense', and a bunch of other kids just like that kid. I really hate any movie-kid like Aidan. I would gladly trade him for Homer Simpson's talking-pie or killer robot driving instructor who travels back in time for some reason, if only there were no more kids with super-natural powers, or kids who seem to know everything about the occult.
'The Ring' isn't that scary - it didn't even improve on 'Ringu', which wasn't very frightening either - and ended up disappointing and boring - 5/10