One ring will do, thank you.

Rating: Null/10 (7 March 2003)

In taking on Kozi Suzuki's novel "Ringu," director Gore Verbinski has accepted a considerable challenge: how to make a seriously chilling tale and maintain a level of drama clearly superior to run-of-the-mill teen victimizing slasher films. Having previously given us "The Mexican" and the Budweiser frogs, he is certainly up to the task technically. However, his gifted focus on visuals, including the opening "ring" on the deadly videotape, is undermined by the second "ring," that on the telephone, bearing a gloomy forecast to those who have just watched the tape. After a number of teenagers have viewed this tape, it is alleged that they have died, precisely as forecast, by an eerie telephone voice giving them 7 days to live. The strange death of her niece and sinister affects on a teenage friend set single mom and newspaper reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) on a search into the events preceeding the tragic night. Cynical regarding an alleged death-dealing videotape, she heads for the remote Shelter Mountain Inn, where her niece had gone with friends. We are also introduced to her young son, Aidan, a strangely introspective, sensitive and very observant child. She too, views the tape & immediately hears the phone ringing. Yep, that same, eerie disembodied voice for whom good news seems an impossible commodity. Now frightened, she enlists Aidan's father, Noah [Martin Henderson Watts], a videotape and sound expert. Also cynical, he views the tape and is surprised that he cannot trace its origins. Rachel is at her best now, researching individual visual images from the tape and constructing a locale, identities of people on the tape, and a background on them and their histories. The Morgan family, horse breeders, seem to be the people depicted; and there have been tragedies, both with horses and a daughter. We have learned that the daughter is/was severely troubled through Dr. Grasnik [Jane Alexander], who treated her for a time. There is also, among the isolated images on the tape, a fly which makes a seamless transition from the world on tape into Rachel's real world. Rachel travels to the remote Morgan center of operations, now almost deserted, and inhabited by the former family patriarch [Brian Cox], a man who seems as haunted by his family memories as he is by the strange happenings with his horses. A ferry ride proves to Rachel that the significance of horses may not be entirely behind us. When the combined efforts of Rachel [research and legwork]; Noah [calming, reasoned approach]; and young Aidan [sensitivity and absorbing presence] drive the plot, "The Ring" is at its best. However, the excellent cinematography is severely undermined by visual effects which stretch a point [one in particular, involving Noah, a tv screen and a certain young woman]. Here interactive television takes on a whole new meaning. Furthermore, the visual competence should never have been compromised to preserve the hokey telephone element: the message could have been imbedded on the tape. Had Verbinski only subscribed to the "less is more" theory of suspense and horror, this could have been a dramatic winner. Had "The Ring" ended ten-fifteen minutes sooner, with Rachel musing over the life expectancy of one in an awful situation, it might have lived up to its promise. Young Aidan's questioning admonishment of his mother would then have had a nice, ominous ring to it. The visual exaggerations and story extension however, tend more to leave a ring around the tub.