a remake with its own impressive, terrifying perspective that works

Rating: 8/10 (25 October 2002)

Coming back to The Ring, having (unfortunately) yet to see the original Ringu or Japanese Ring features, it is most involving and absorbing as an effort of a filmmaker who takes the materials of convention and forms them into terrifying shapes. It's all about ambiance, really, and director Gore Verbinski doesn't take any of this in a silly manner, or one that he would want us to think is too silly. It's about a video tape that when watched in seven days the viewer of said tape (a series of images not unlike a master's class at a university in gut-wrenching and eye-tumbling surrealism) will die.
The characters in the ring investigate this, and come upon some familiar tropes of the ghost story and of things like sentience (I got a particular feeling and connection back to the Shining, no pun intended), but Verbinski's intent is to grip the viewer in a story that keeps to itself very well, is filmed without the gimmicks of, for example, Michael Bay's productions of remake-horror crap, and features actors that can make us believe this material. As with other superior ghost-story horror movies this decade like the Orphanage, it appreciates what is possible in just lighting a room, in letting a character take time to see things and experience them in a visceral manner so that we can as well, and Verbinski and his write bring on images that are inescapable (i.e. the horse on the ship, the girl crawling out of the TV and going across the room).
It's a crafty piece of slick Hollywood horror, and it's intrigued me enough to go back to the unseen source material, which is the best a remake can do aside from its potential re-watchability. 8.5/10