At least I saw it at the cheap second run place.

Rating: 1/10 (16 February 2003)

Movie Review for The Ring By MaxD
Roger Ebert said of the movie Pearl Harbor, that is was 'a two hour movie crammed into three.' I mention that only because Gore Verbinski, director of The Ring, performs a trick of time manipulation similar in scope and power. He manages to make two hours seem like four. Essentially he has crafted a test of human mental endurance: How long can a mind be subjected to the insanely boring?
The Ring tells the tail of a cursed videotape that kills who ever watches it precisely seven days post viewing. Whoever watches the tape gets a phone call right after the tape ends. A whispery voice, says 'Seven days.' (It is interesting that every one who gets this call knows that it means they have only seven days to live. No one ever thinks to ask, 'Seven Days what? Who is this?). Our heroes are a divorced single-mother of a withdrawnchild-professional-journalist-torn between her career and motherhood-type, a withdrawn child who draws weird pictures and is mildly psychic, and the slacker-video expert ex-husband. The journalist is put on the case by a grieving sister confused by the mysterious circumstances of her daughter's death. 'You ask questions its what you do.' Says the grieving sister to the journalist. Great. From there on we know that at the very least the journalist and the withdrawn boy-who draws eerie premonitory pictures will see the tape. That much does not shock us. What is shocking is the fact that no one takes the news, 'seven days', too hard. We might expect this from the journalist, she is used to working with deadlines, but what about the kid? Or how about the slacker ex-husband? In fact no one really gets too worked up about it at all.
The Ring begins much the same way Scream, a superior movie to be sure, did, with one minor variation. Instead of one young teenage girl alone in a big house out in the middle of nowhere, there are two. Actually there are other variations in this scene. For instance, Verbinski opted to substitute snappy dialogue with the utterly banal. He also managed to remove any tension or malice from the opening scene or any scene. We, the audience, are never scared, we are never made to jump, and we never, ever care.
What is on the cursed tape? It is supposed be like someone's nightmare. However it is full of images that are not as menacing, disturbing or scary as they could be. I will not bore you with the details I wish the film had not bored me with them. Actually I will bore you with one detail. Embedded in the images are the all clues an enterprising journalist with a mildly psychic son, and a video expert ex-husband need to unravel the motives, and origin of the malevolent force behind the tape. The son however is no help at all. While he is obviously in contact with the malevolent force, and could provide some valuable information to the other heroes, he is a cliché.
He is the disturbed boy who voices his deeper revelations through cryptic drawings. This means that to the rest of the cast he will only speak in sentence fragments, nods and grunts while trying hard to look mysterious and somewhat beyond.
The mistake Gore Verbinski makes, well the most important one anyway, was to think he had a film more important than he really did. At the heart of this film is a Friday night teen horror flick. He misses this and instead tries to make a film that is deeper, and more mysterious. He cannot do this because he is, after all, working the script he was given. The result is a ponderous film, that tries to beat into you, with clichéd shot after clichéd shot (the film uses every cinematic convention in the horror filmmaker's arsenal), that it is a film with depth and originality. On top of that he steals from truly engaging suspense/horror films: Psycho, Halloween, The Exorcist, Scream, The Sixth Sense. I am sure I am missing others, but I hope you will not fault me their omission. After all, about 20 minutes before the film was to roll the blessed credits, I had pulled out my cell phone and began playing brick attack.