A good movie if you're willing to turn your brain off.

Rating: 8/10 (13 December 2004)

***Spoilers: If you have not seen the movie, you shouldn't be reading this***
Overall, "The Ring" was a fantastic movie, mainly because out of the limited number of horror movies I have seen in my life, this one actually managed to scare me. All the creepy little details are perfectly done, and it also has some great shock moments (the scene with Rachel's body in the closet made me jump about a foot). The tape itself is very mysterious and disturbing, and is, in my opinion, the best part of the movie.
However, there were several things that were rather dumb, and the more I thought about them after I watched it, the more I didn't like it. It's the kind of movie that you can't analyze too much, or you'll ruin it for yourself. For one thing, the entire premise of combining supernatural mysticism with VHS technology is a bit goofy. But what really turned me off about this one was the kid, Aiden.
Aiden drove me crazy. I'm supposed to feel scared for him, and yet he spends the entire movie looking like he's about to wet his pants. He's a shaking, bug-eyed, dippy little nerd. All kids in horror flicks are like this, too (The Sixth Sense, The Shining, Invaders From Mars, etc.), and I'm sick of it. I want to see a horror where the kid stands up for himself like a man. Maybe then I'd care about whether the ghost gets him or not. Nervous outcasts like Aiden just annoy me. If I had a kid like him, I'd LET the ghost get him. After all, if he's not gutsy enough to protect himself from a stupid ghost like Samara, he probably wasn't going to last long anyway.
This brings me to my second point: Samara the ghost was indeed stupid. Yes, everything was creepy and suspenseful, until we find out the exact method she uses to kill her victims, namely, crawling out of the TV and... looking at them. What the heck!? How hard can it be to defeat her?? All you have to do is unplug your TV. If you're not swift enough to do that, then just run away! She can't catch you, because she happens to be the slowest-moving ghost of all time.
This is why I got so mad at that guy Noah at the end. All he had to do was LEAVE THE DAMN ROOM, but this proved to be too hard a task for him. Samara's inching toward him with these teeny-tiny baby steps, and this guy decides to start falling over and crashing into things like one of the Three Stooges. What a moron. If he's so uncoordinated that he can't walk ten feet without tripping all over himself, then he probably wouldn't have lived long anyway, either.
Well, if you can handle the unintended silliness of the plot and characters, and focus on the well-done atmosphere and details, then you will enjoy this movie. Just don't think about it too hard.