Movie Review by Nigel A. Messenger
Starring: Naomi Watts, Brian Cox, Jane Alexander, Daveigh Chase
Director: Gore Verbinski
THE RING is a remake of a very successful Japanese movie which probably falls somewhere in the suspense / horror genre.
Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) is an investigative reporter who comes across a potential story for her paper when she realises there is a link between a series of unexplained deaths where the victims die of heart failure for no apparent reason and all have a look of terror on their faces when they die.
The only thing that links all the victims together is a particular video tape that contains bizarre images which all of the victims watched exactly seven days before they died. Plus they all received a phone call immediately after watching the tape.
Rachel finds the tape and then of course watches it. Then she gets the phone call. After that any image of her, either on video or still camera has a blurred face. To make matters worse her young son accidentally watches the tape and Rachel realises she has seven days to find out the secrets behind the video and save both their lives.
There’s no doubt about it – this is a creepy movie and it’s well made, following the original Japanese movie almost exactly with only some minor alteration. One of these is a harrowing sequence involving a horse which is either an addition or I simply don’t remember it from the original!
If you have seen the Japanese RING it is still worth watching this new US version, but there’s no getting away from the fact that this is a faithful remake and knowing what is going to happen will reduce your enjoyment of the movie a little. However if like me you don’t speak Japanese you will have been reading the subtitles so it’s good not to have that distraction here.
For those who don’t know about THE RING there is a nice little twist at the end, which due to the first RING’S success inspired two movies about THE RING, first a sequel RING 2 and then a prequel in RING 0.
Hopefully this American version of THE RING will be successful enough to also spawn the next two in THE RING trilogy – but I would hesitate if someone offers it to you on videotape.
