A better-than-expected adaptation

Rating: Null/10 (28 October 2002)

I'll leave the symbolic analyses of this film to more lettered critics of cinema, and get to the meat of the matter: this film, for all its' Hollywoodized flaws is still miles ahead of anything else in the pack so far this year. Director Verbinski had the wit to adapt as much as he could from the original Japanese version, "Ringu", thereby letting the sheer momentum of the story's corner-of-your-eye horrors herd the viewer into an inescapable nightmare. It accomplishes the neat trick of (mostly) sidestepping all of our "here-it-comes" expectations and coming out of left field to deliver something even more horrible. It reminded me of Stephen King's comment twenty years ago, when he said that he thinks books are better at conveying horror than movies because with books you can get the audience alone, one at a time. "The Ring" came closer for me than most other American films(exceptions being the 1963 version of "The Haunting" and "Wait Until Dark") at doing just that. When I saw it recently in a packed theater, the audience laughed nervously every time the expected scare made them jump; about two-thirds of the way in, nobody was laughing, and we were all pulling for Naomi Watts' heroine to solve this horrifying riddle of the fatal video tape and save herself and her loved ones. It really conjured up a modern-day horror to address modern alienation, and its attendant ills. By the way, in addressing another reviewer's canard on this site: yes, Verbinski's insistance on using overly loud "whooomph!" sound effects was fairly annoying, but that failed to kill the mood this film conjured up for me and millions of others. If you want a REALLY annoying example of intrusive music and "BOOGA-BOOGA!" foley effects, catch "Ghost Story". I saw that turkey when it came out in '81, and it was all I could do not to throw my large-size Coke Classic at the screen. A small editorial note: any and all critics who didn't find this film even a little spooky obviously suffer the "auteur disease": if it's made in America,it's automatically crap; if it's made in France, they'll kiss it's ass no matter how bad it is. Selah.