Worth watching... just barely

Rating: 7/10 (8 February 2003)

A videotape that kills people when they watch it. *sigh* All right...
The argument of the story sounds somewhat intriguing and the first sequence of the movie makes you think you're going to have a hard time trying to sleep that night. Well, I for one didn't.
As the storyline develops the whole videotape business goes down the trash and the movie slowly turns into a "What lies beneath" or "The sixth sense" kind of film. I didn't like that one bit. By the end of the movie, and specially in the last sequence, you have to remind yourself "Oh yeah, the tape! That's what this was all about!". In short, the movie weakens itself progressively and finally collapses, just to have a little spark of life in that "last confrontation" scene. Still, the very ending, in my humble opinion, is nothing short of dumb. And Naomi Watts' performance doesn't help the story much either. It's just not convincing.
I think the movie is worth watching for two main reasons:

The videotape itself gives you goose bumps. As they say in the movie, it's something you'd only see in a nightmare. - The "last confrontation" I mentioned earlier contain some of the scariest images you'll see in any movie. The director chose many of those shots so that they would look like an individual point of view, and that has a big impact when you're alone in your room watching TV. But then again, most of this new wave of thriller movie directors do the same.

Aside from this two sequences the movie does not contribute anything to the genre. Recent movies like "The sixth sense", "The others" or "Signs" have a much bigger impact on the audience using only the atmosphere built throughout the film and a few carefully selected shots and sounds; they don't rely in visual FX: just good directors and good performances. (8/dec/02)