See the Ring and die...of embarrassment, maybe.

Rating: Null/10 (27 October 2002)

I had high hopes. Naomi Watts, whom I loved in Mulholland Dr., and a wonderful premise about being doomed after viewing a video recording, had me hooked.
Then I saw it. A conventional slasher-style opening, but I was willing to forgive it for that. And I will admit, when we do see the video, it is wonderfully cryptic and eerily surreal, and that's always a selling point for me.
But right after that, it all goes downhill. The characters get dumber, the jump-scenes louder, and the story line far too conventional. The filmmakers answer all the wrong questions and ignore the right ones; they try to be cryptic, but still dumb it down for standard acceptance. And the ending was about twenty minutes longer than it should have been, and a sad attempt to make this above the typical "ghost" story. They take a nice, eerie, atmospherical set up and turn it into a special effects "here's what we haven't been showing you!" horror show, quite reminiscent of House on Haunted Hill (1999) or The Haunting (1999 as well). And that blasted ring that keeps popping up is quite headache-inducing.
I did like the idea of the video, I did like the video itself (very "Lynchian" touch--a nod to Watts' last job, perhaps), but beyond that, it's typical Hollywood horror fare, which taxes the suspension of disbelief just a bit too much, and which, quite frankly, we're getting too much of.
Most people I know said it was creepy. But the rest, who have been exposed to a wider range of far-better films, concur: when you see the Ring, you will crave Tylenol.
I've seen worse, but I've also seen a helluva lot better.