By Gore Verbinski, 2002.
Starring David Dorfman, Martin Henderson, Naomi Watts.
Rating: 8.5/10, 6/10.
After I saw Mulholland Drive, I decided that Naomi Watts was the best thing that had ever happened to the world and that she needed to keep happening. Movies like The Ring weren’t exactly what I had in mind, but I’ll take it for now.
The Ring is based on one of the most ludicrous concepts I can think of. There’s a video tape that people stumble across by accident. They watch it and are massively unsettled by what they see. When the tape ends, the phone rings, and a voice tells the person who answers that they are going to die in seven days. Seven days later, well, they die, amid spooky happenings like TVs turning on and showing static and mysterious puddles of water showing up on the floor. That a very effective and fairly intelligent thriller/horror movie was built out of that premise is amazing to me.
Because The Ring really is effective. Effective enough that I was afraid to walk home alone after seeing it, afraid to answer the phone when it rang, and afraid to go anywhere near a television. In fact, even thinking about it now enough to write the review, five full months after I saw the damn movie, is giving me the willies. And the picture at the top of the screen, well, when I found it I was unable to let myself use any other, but god, if it doesn’t scare the living crap out of me.
Now that I’ve established that the movie achieved its goal of making me pee my pants, what’s left to talk about? Talking about acting in a movie like this is rather senseless; Watts showed herself in Mulholland Drive to be one of the most talented actors I’ve ever come across, but in this sort of movie no one really gets much of a chance to really act. The actors are more sort of placeholders and line-sayers than artists. Which I’m not complaining about, I’m just saying there’s not much to talk about. I could talk about the plot, but I don’t want to reveal too much. Even if some of the shocking developments don’t hold up to too much scrutiny, they work well while you’re engaged in the headlong rush that is actually watching the movie, so I figure I should leave them as surprises.
Ah, but there’s still the direction and cinematography. Excellent, excellent. Check out the use of lighting, especially in outdoor night scenes. Or the washed out, grimy look of the ferry. The way the filmmakers have exploited the fact of height in the barn loft. And above all, check out the brilliant film-within-a-film, the movie that people watch before they die. Burning trees, flies, dead horses, a well with—was that an arm?—reaching out, a woman’s reflection in a mirror...all beautiful and terrifying. I’ll have you know that as I remember these details and write them down, I keep glancing nervously over my shoulder. This, in case you couldn’t tell, is a movie that horrified me. But I digress. Yes, the direction was fantastic.
One thing I really liked was the melding of magic and technology. While I don’t quite understand why the videotape ever came into existance, why the circumstances that it relates to would result in a videotape of all media, but the way we’re shown a physical, technological object—a VHS tape—that also exists on the realm of magic and terror is fantastic. When it’s paused, a fly continues to move a little, and even, if you touch it just right, will leap off the screen. If you manipulate the vertical and horizontal controls on the screen, why, there’s more to see than what you can see normally. Magical.
I was going to go on longer, but I’m scaring myself far too much. And I’m not exaggerating.