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The Ring
***
Cinema
Reviews - Week of February 28, 2003
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
115 minutes. Directed by Gore Verbinski. Written by Ehren Kruger; from the
1998 movie "Ringu", written by Hiroshi Takahashi; based on a novel by Kôji
Suzuki. Starring Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, David Dorfman, Brian Cox,
Jane Alexander, Lindsay Frost, Amber Tamblyn, Rachael Bella, Daveigh Chase,
Shannon Cochran.
So there's this videotape, right, and it's full
of all these harrowing black-and-white images like static, and negative horizons,
and animals in torture, and a woman reflected in a mirror that randomly changes
places on the wall. You watch it, and then your phone rings. And then you
have seven days to live.
"The Ring" has a terrific premise
-- it's one step closer to what "Urban Legend" should have been, and wasn't.
The video itself is so creepy that we can well believe it's some sort of
hazardous supernatural trap, lurking on dusty shelves and waiting for the
unsuspecting. It's discovered by a reporter named Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts),
who watches it, hears her phone ring, and is freaked out enough before noticing
that her face isn't turning out properly on photographs. She's cursed. Then
her son sees the tape. It's a race against time to save both their
lives.
The movie is an American remake of "Ringu", the
Japanese creepshow from 1998 that broke box-office records in its home country,
became international legend and has already spawned two sequels. Here, it's
available on DVD and has been shown on television. In the USA, the release
was delayed by corporate malfeasants to pave way for this version, but the
difference is not that spectacular. "The Ring" is pretty much an English-language
copy of the film that inspired it, and it carries the same strengths and
flaws.
What works in "The Ring" is sheer visceral impact.
It's set in Seattle, the city where it never stops raining, and the
cinematography carries and a dank, downcast pall through which the misery
of the story is able to depress us thoroughly. It has plenty of creepy shock
moments, the best of them revolving around the watching of the tape, the
dread of that phone ring and the horror of walls closing in when those seven
days are up. The big budget of the new version enables the director, Gore
Verbsinki, to crank up the sound and use slick shock techniques in his editing
-- he manages to pull this stuff off and get the audience jumping and holding
their breath without cheapening the imagery or making it seem cheesy. There's
a scene with a demented horse running around on a ferry that could have become
laughable, but the uncomfortable framing and dizzy sounds of the moment manage
to let it become surprisingly disturbing.
And then there is the story, which, as in the
original, drags the whole thing down and makes the midsection a boring slog.
Rachel goes off to the countryside to investigate who is in the video, and
what chains of events led to its destructive power. There's a whole lot of
unnecessary history, trawls through psychiatric records, folks looking off
into the distance and telling stories of the bad times. It's hard to follow,
and detracts from the central idea.
On the other hand, it sets up the ending -- an
unpredictable one, of wholly unnecessary evil, which would do a good job
of staying with us if it felt like a final salvo rather than a saving grace.
And on yet another hand, "The Ring" kinda botches the ending, by explaining
everything in dialogue when the original film drew the exact same conclusions
through images.
There are other flaws, like plausibility holes,
and the fact that the kid in the movie is dressed and photographed in a way
that does nothing but rip off Haley Joel Osment's performance in "The Sixth
Sense". But the centre of the movie is the most disheartening thing. In a
remake, you get the opportunity to iron over problems of the source material.
The screenwriter, Ehren Kruger, has not even bothered -- apart from simply
copying the good stuff, all she has done is underline every plot point, because
Hollywood does not trust its audiences to follow anything that is not spelled
out for us.
Still, "The Ring" is worth seeing. Verbinski stages
it well on a technical level, and includes enough genuinely unnerving images
in individual moments to freak us out real good. There's a lot to be said
for a movie that takes the sound of ringing and turns it into something horrific.
For idiots who cannot be convinced to turn their cellphones off in the cinema,
here is some encouragement.
COPYRIGHT©
2003 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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