I'm scared.........

Rating: 9/10 (27 January 2007)

There are three main types of horror in the film world - gory horror, jump-out-of-your-seat horror and just plain weird horror. Though The Ring contains elements of all these three, the reason why it's so scary is because it's just so weird! I mean, even the tape alone had me freaked out - and when Rachel watches it in an empty cabin on an old TV on her own, it really builds up an atmosphere of true terror that no amount of disfigured corpses can do. Some scenes from this film are so strange and disturbing that they'll linger in your mind for the rest of your life. This was the film that inspired me to sleep with my bedroom door closed - creaking doors in the dark are the most haunting things horror has offered us. Samara is one of horror's most unorthodox villains - the bit where she comes out of the TV at the end is scary. And the ring left by the cup of tea on the newspaper - everything starts to come together. I personally found the conclusion hard to understand - I don't see how it brought everything together, and the sequel didn't exactly do a great deal of justice to any of it either. It is evident that some scenes were just put in the film for fright-factor rather than any real use in the plot, but this is one of the main problems of horror films. And as long as you've got a horror film with an original premise (a tape that kills you a week after watching it) and a few genuine frights (or, in The Ring's case, a lot), you've got an interested audience. There are some disfigured corpses and jump-out-of-your-seat frights, but The Ring is best in the sense that it is just spooky. And, in spite of what I said earlier, everything DOES kind of make sense - everything we see on the tape is later revisited. And when you see those places again, it feels very strange indeed... 9/10