It Did Absolutely Nothing For Me - Except Put Me To Sleep

Rating: 1/10 (6 June 2009)

From the high ratings and good reviews this movie gets, I approached it with very high expectations, which ultimately led to a major disappointment. The movie was spoiled from the start by a story that made no sense whatsoever (incoherent is a word that comes to mind to try to describe the plot), was then further burdened by weak acting galore and then ruins the only hope for its redemption by not even being bad enough to be funny - it ended up just plain bad (and not in the least bit scary.) Out of a mountain of problems, let me highlight just one: where in the world did the video come from? The story (such as it is) revolves around the concept that anyone who watches this video dies exactly seven days later. But the origin of the video is never satisfactorily explained. Yes, it has something to do with Samara (the deceased girl whose evil powers are still being used from her grave) - but how? And since the video is the centrepiece of the movie, I found that a major stumbling block that I couldn't get over. The truth is, this movie put me to sleep for about 40 minutes in the middle. When I could make no sense of the ending after waking up, I assumed it was because of the 40 minutes I had missed; so I went back and watched those 40 minutes. Clearly I was a glutton for punishment. It still made no sense. It was a total waste of 2 hours. 1/10