My First Horror Movie! Still One Of My Favorites

Rating: 8/10 (20 November 2005)

Well, although this movie is only from 2002 it feels very nostalgic for me. I saw this movie when I was 12 and when I was still going to Eden Prairie so it has a lot of old memories attached to it.
That's a little strange considering the film I'm reviewing is a terrifying shriek-fest that disturbed me for months. But this was my introduction to horror, so I suppose that's why I'm happy looking back on it.
This film is not perfect. The acting is not of extremely high caliber (aside from Naomi as Racherl and Daveigh as Samara). Yet there is a magic beyond the film's outer layer that disturbs the senses. The noises of the tape are a good example of this, still frightening for me today.
When I saw this film at my birthday party on Sept. 5th, 2005 it was the first time I had watched it in a very long time. I did not get extremely frightened by any of it except for the classic scene where Samara crawls out of the TV. But I'm sure you could predict that.
However, I will never fully recover from this movie and I will never look at static the same way again. And I thank the makers of the movie for allowing me to do so. They turned a slightly cheesy Japanese movie into something oddly beautiful and disturbing at once. Something that brings out subconscious fears that we may have never known we had.