The Ring
Director: Gore Verbinski
Year Released: 2002
Rating: 1.5
We're told right from the beginning of this Japanese horror movie remake that after you watch this unlabeled experimental art film you'll die in seven days; it's no surprise that the death tape itself - which runs about five minutes long - is about as good as a Chris Cunningham music video and more captivating than the rest of the movie. All right, I'll give it a little credit: the first forty-five minutes aren't bad, and capture the attention with clever editing tricks (like the two-second shot of the shrieking corpse in the closet), but the search for the origins of the tape is outright ridiculous and leads absolutely nowhere - it's as if the writers wanted to make what's essentially a supernatural story conform to realistic standards, thereby derailing the movie with pesky things like logic and common sense. Naomi Watts, as gorgeous and talented as anyone working in the medium, is left without much of a character.
