rip-off of the 1980 classic "The Changeling"

Rating: 1/10 (26 September 2002)

The best part of Gore Verbinski's "The Ring", and one of the only reasons to see the movie, is Hans Zimmer's masterful score. It will go down as one of the most haunting and complex scores of his career. But besides the music and a few effective scenes the movie has nothing going for it.
Naomi Watts, who can be a brilliant actress when in the hands of the right director(like David Lynch), is awful in this movie. She, along with most of the cast, consistently delivers her lines as if she were reading them off a teleprompter. Watts exhibits the same kind of artificiality that was necessary for her character in "Mulholland Drive", but here it is just embarrassing and it comes across as a terrible performance.
Gore Verbinski, who shows potential as a filmmaker with a few well-directed scenes, based this film on the Japanese horror movie with the same title. The original movie, in and of itself, was a rip-off of the 1980 classic "The Changeling" with George C. Scott. It is incredibly vexatious when you sit there in the theatre waiting for the pay-off and it turns out to be the pay-off from another movie.
Like I said before, most of the acting is atrocious, with the exception of Brian Cox's cameo. It is impossible for a bad movie to bring down this amazing actor. In fact, the two scenes involving Brian Cox are the most effective and frightening moments in the movie. Every other scene intended to be scary was laughable. The scares could be spotted a mile away.
With "The Ring" Verbinski wanted to make a rich, psychologically disturbing horror film along the same lines as "The Tenant" and other great films that are better than this movie. Instead what we get is a film that wants to be something that it cannot be due to a flawed screenplay and bad performances. Not to mention that for anyone who has seen "The Changeling" this movie will be recycled material anyway.