Darkly Beautiful Horror Movie

Rating: 9/10 (26 September 2014)

Gore Verbinski's 'The Ring',released in 2002, still possesses a distinct eerie quality which continues to effectively creep out audiences 12 years after it's initial release. This is largely due to the wise directorial choices made by 'Pirates of the Caribbean' director Verbinski in shifting the focus away from gore and more on atmosphere.
What sets 'The Ring' apart from most horror movies of today and recent years, is the emphasis put on atmosphere, visuals and suspense, much unlike popular films such as the 'Saw' franchise, which rely more on gore and gratuitous torture scenes to shock or scare the audience. Unlike the 'Saw' sequels(or even 'The Human Centipede')which are just excuses to show people being killed in graphic and disturbing ways, 'The Ring' hooks you in with a compelling and interesting story with revelations and discoveries made one after the other. Technically, the film unfolds like a mystery, with reporter Rachel Keller(played sturdily by Naomi Watts) investigating the curse of a strange videotape and the dark secrets it possesses. No more will be said about the plot, as the fun of watching the film for the first time is discovering the secrets of the tape. A second viewing is where one can be more able to appreciate the enormous amount of craft and effort put in by Verbinski and his production team, which is where much of the beauty of the film lies.
'The Ring' is set in Seattle and surrounding Pacific Northwest locales, which gives the film an exceedingly rainy and gloomy look. The filters and colour schemes that Verbinski and cinematographer Bojan Bazelli employ to capture these locations is of a sickly green and blue tint, which makes the look of the whole movie appear somewhat unnatural, or 'off', which is subtle but extremely effective in it's own right.
The score, by renowned composer Hans Zimmer, is absolutely brilliant in evoking different moods throughout the film. While there are the somewhat typical loud booms in the soundtrack when something frightening or tense is occurring on screen, it is the quieter segments of the score that give the film it's unique and beautiful sense of melancholy. Zimmer employs many types of instruments, including effective use of the piano, to give 'The Ring' a haunting quality that echoes with sadness and despair, with sinister violins succeeding in painting an atmosphere of dread, while in contrast pianos and other instruments combine to create the melancholy atmosphere. There are even segments of the score, for example a grim lullaby from one of the film's characters, that actually give the film an almost fairytale like quality. The eight minute track from the score, entitled 'The Well', represents a fantastic overview of most of the musical ideas explored by Zimmer, and is a great listening experience in itself.
The core theme at the heart of the film is the negative side of television. For example, the two(rather clichéd) teenage girls at the beginning of the film discuss how the unhealthy waves from watching too much TV can result in brain cell loss. Later in the film, Rachel is out on the balcony looking into the adjacent apartments across the street. The camera pans over several windows, showing people transfixed to the television screen, accompanied by Zimmer's sad and moody score. And finally, the television acts as the bringer of death to a major character. Since television is such a large part of contemporary daily human life and culture, 'The Ring' shows us a glimpse of the negative side of it and portrays the television as a gateway to another, sinister world that could potentially have the power to kill us. By having the story focus on something as universal as television, 'The Ring' has the power to unsettle basically anyone.
One amusing thing about the film is how much of a product of it's time it has now become, mostly due to the fact that the main plot device is a VHS tape(Remember those?). Since VHS tapes are now a thing of the past and have since been succeeded by DVDs and Blu-rays, some plot holes in the narrative do come to mind if you think about it for a bit. But never mind. The movie is too beautifully made and creepy to get nitpicky over, complete with a bleak and terrifying non-ending that will get you thinking, 'will it ever stop?'