Brilliantly scary.

Rating: 9/10 (21 October 2002)

If you watch the tape, seven days later, you die. That's the tagline for one of the creepiest, most effective horror thrillers to hit the screens in years.
'The Ring' is a remake of a Japanese film and novel, ably directed this time around by Gore Verbinski (best known for 'The Mexican'). It stars Naomi Watts as Rachel Keller, a journalist whose niece dies under mysterious circumstances exactly one week after having watched that cursed tape. After tracking down a copy of the tape and seeing for herself what's there, Rachel finds herself drawn into a maze of mystery and intrigue mixed with the paranormal, working against the clock. If the stories are true - she only has seven days to unlock the secrets of the tape.
The key to this film lies in the visuals. Obviously, in using a VHS tape to show this ghostly curse, it's important to have a strange, creepy look to the tape - it holds all the visual clues for the story to follow, as well as setting up the theme and mood for the entire picture. Everything on the tape is grainy, black-and-white, and silent. There is a definite foreboding to the whole thing, even though, as one character says, it looks like an art-school project.
Visuals are also important in the rest of the filming - most of the action takes place in gloomy, dark, and remote locales. It's the Seattle area, so it's almost always raining. Most interiors are gray and stark. A rundown cabin in the woods. A lighthouse and farm on a cold, barren island. From the initial scenes, which are more vibrant and colorful, to the end sequences, things in Rachel's life are veering her closer to the secrets in the tape and the terrible answers she's looking to find. Visually, the film grows darker and grimmer as the seventh day approaches.

Watts handles this with a mixture of tension and unavoidable curiosity as Rachel's psyche is assaulted by tragedy and fear. A lesser actress might fall into the usual scream queen traps - all stumbling and screaming - but Watts is better than that. She shows fear, yes, but also resolve and a good sense of intelligence even as she draws closer to the end. This is certainly her movie - she's the focus around which everything unfurls, and she holds her end together quite well.
'The Ring' is a ghost story, and a very tightly-plotted one at that. Everything in the tape is a clue to the mystery, and as it unfolds, more and more layers are evident. The film does its audience the credit of not completely spelling out each and every detail, or walking through every step of the plot. It reveals enough to bring gasps and shivers and even scares when it has to, and never resorts to manipulating the facts and motivations to achieve a cheap surprise. There are twists, but there are seeds for those twists that fester in the background until they're needed - providing great chills along the way.
This is a well-designed, well-executed thriller that has scares to spare, and a chilling backstory that will leave the audience in shivers even after the film is over. Top-notch psychological horror here.