Unsettling thriller

Rating: Null/10 (11 November 2002)

I've always felt that the most effective horror films are not the ones that have tons of blood and gore, or ones that just give you scare after scare, and the effect wears off when the lights come up. The truly effective ones are the films that leave you shuddering for days after. THE RING is a case in point.
Naomi Watts stars as a Seattle newspaper writer who delves into the mysterious deaths of four friends of hers who apparently died after watching a strange videotape on a TV at an isolated mountain cabin. When she watches it for herself, she sees the tape's grainy, nightmarish black-and-white images, beginning and ending with a mysterious ring. It is immediately followed by a phone call, where the mysterious caller intones "Seven Days"--implying that she too will die, like her friends, within a week of having seen that videotape for herself. She and her boyfriend (Martin Henderson) begin a search for how the tape was made, who made it, and why it was made. The result is an unsettling mix of psychological and supernatural horror, with implications of Satanic imagery scattered throughout.
Though it is a reworking of a 1998 Japanese film, THE RING manages to succeed on its own. At first, it seems to start out as yet another teen-horror slasher film; but as time goes along, both director Gore Verbinski and screenwriter Ehren Kruger fashion a heart-pounding, chilling, and disturbing thriller. There are a number of great shock effects, but none that are particularly gory. THE RING is largely fashioned as a horror mystery. In that case, it is much like THE SIXTH SENSE, even down to the details of Watts' son (David Dorfman) who knows more than what he's telling.
Watts gives a very effective performance as the reporter; and the suspense is well-handled by Verbinski. The score by Hans Zimmer is equally chilling, and at many points uses a variation the celebrated "Dies Irae" (Day of Wrath) theme, one that had been effectively used before in such films as THE SHINING and POLTERGEIST. THE RING is not a scream-laden fest, but one that gets under the skin and into the mind. On that count, it is extraordinarily effective.