It could have been done better.

Rating: Null/10 (15 December 2002)

Thar be spoilers ahead, mateys..
This movie has me a bit confused. First of all, I need to say that it was a fabulous idea, and would have been a great movie had it been done better, but there's still the fact that it wasn't. There were a few things that weren't really necessary to the development of the plot and would have better served the movie by not being there.
First, the photos. The movie capitalized on the fact that pictures taken of people only become mangled after they see the video... I fail to see how a bunch of blurry vacation photos are important, especially since they make a big deal about it for twenty minutes, then drop it for the rest of the movie and never explain why it happens. Next comes the ferry scene. Completely unnecessary. The fact that a horse bolts and has conniption fits when Rachel comes near has nothing to do with the rest of the movie except that Samara lived on a horse farm. The only other major problem I had was the fact that the movie ended at least three times before it actually finished (finding Samara's body, Rachel telling Aidan it will be okay, etc.).
Besides this, it was a halfway decent movie. It did a thorough job of creeping me out, especially at the point where Samara crawls out of Noah's television... that alone had me sleeping with the bathroom light on and music playing for a week afterward. My TV set started shorting out and getting staticky exactly a week after we saw it -- I half expected a drenched, algae-covered girl clad in white to crawl out of the screen. Overall, a decent movie. Not amazing because of the things I've mentioned plus a couple other minor things, but not terrible. 6/10.