Bringing Japanese Horror Stateside

Rating: 8/10 (12 March 2017)

Here in the United States, our horror movie culture is defined by mask-wearing, knife-wielding psychos like Michael Myers and Jason Vorhees. Over in Japan, though, their horror is much more dark and symbolic. "The Ring" (an adaptation of the Japanese "Ringu") brings that cinematic style over here.
For a basic plot summary, "The Ring" introduces a video tape that, when watched, will result in the viewer getting a phone call telling them they will die in seven days...which is usually exactly what happens. However, when the tape is seen by a journalist (Naomi Watts) and inadvertently by her son, they become engaged in a race against the clock to try and decipher the tape's mysterious imagery and the real story behind the ring.
The dark, disturbing imagery in this film is really what makes it a horror stand-out. Since we are accustomed to more in-your-face scare scenes, this oblique style proves to be even more terrifying. The young girl with the straight hair over her eyes, the well, the dead horses, and the horrifying faces of the tape's victims all add up to a cornucopia of disturbing images.
"The Ring" is also an exercise in the cerebral. Not all the answers are given up front or thrown in the viewers' face. Instead, we are forced to evaluate all the imagery and subtle clues to piece things together. To paraphrase Hitchcock, what we don't know/see is often scarier than the obvious.
Overall, I consider "The Ring" to be a seminal horror film for fans of the genre (right up there with Halloween and Saw). Given the chance, I would have bumped the star-rating up to 4.5.