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THE RING Send This Review to a Friend
Just plain stupid is a suitable appellation for "The Ring," an English language version of "Ringu," the Japanese predecessor. Scary? Perhaps, if you are frightened by ultra silly imagery, ghastly faces of the dead and elementary weirdness. Sooner or later, a video was bound to emerge on film as a supernatural killer. When "The Ring" goes to video, you may want to avoid it, not as a killer, but as the bore it already is on the big screen.
The plot in this flick, directed by Gore Verbinski, involves a report that whoever watches a certain video will receive an ominous phone call and die in seven days. Proof? A group of acquaintances have all died under suspicious circumstances in different places at the same time.
The presence of widely publicized Naomi Watts ("Mulholland Drive"), admittedly attractive and talented, offers promise, but her role as a newspaper reporter in Seattle checking into the situation after the death of her niece merely makes her an accomplice in the overall boredom. As Rachel Keller, she tries to find out what's behind the video and the deaths.
I wish she'd let me know. When everything is over, you are still left with the question of what the hell it was really all about? We do learn about past doings involving a family that is depicted amid the garish images on the tape, and there is one good scene with a horse that is going nuts on a boat. But the connections are hopelessly vague and the dangers the heroine encounters are more absurd than worrisome.
"The Ring" at best is alleged entertainment strictly for those who scare easily and aren't concerned with making sense from whatever is up there before them. A DreamWorks release.
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