Published via Ecency

(source: tmdb.org)

Hollywood, always in search for trends to milk till the last drop, found another inspiration in early 2000s. Those were Japanese horror films, which were promptly remade into their American versions. The most successful of them all was The Ring, 2002 film directed by Gore Verbinski.

The film represents remake of Ring a.k.a. Ringu, 1998 Japanese film directed by Hideo Nakata and based on the eponymous 1991 novel by Koji Suzuku. New version has the plot set in Pacific Northwest and begins when teenager Rebecca “Becca” Kotler (played by Rachael Bella) tells her friend Katherine “Katie” Embry (played by Amber Tamblyn) urban legend about mysterious VHS videotape which after seven days kills everyone that watched it. It soon becomes apparent that urban legend is actually a true story – Katie has actually saw the tape and seven days later dies together with her friends who did the same. Rachel Keller (played by Naomi Watts), Seattle-based investigative journalist and Katie’s cousin, decides to find the truth behind those events. Trail leads her to cursed videotape which she watches and soon becomes convinced that she has only seven days to live. She decides to spend that time in frantic attempts to discover who and why made such tape and somehow lift the curse. She is helped by her ex husband, video technician Noah Clay (played by Martin Henderson). They also have to save their young son Aidan (played by David Dorfman) who accidentally watched the tape.

Gore Verbinski, who would in subsequent years have many successes with Pirates of the Caribbean film series, was initially hailed by some American critics as one of the most original horror director of its time, despite his film being remake of someone else’s work. Verbinski was helped by scriptwriter Ehren Kruger, who would later have even more success with Transformers series. Result of their work is a film that doesn’t rely too much on exploitation cinema content like violence and gore. Instead The Ring creates anxiety and fear among audience with clever manipulation and atmosphere of certain doom. A lot of credit should go to cinematographer Bojan Bazelli, who has also put Pacific Northwest locations to good use. Naomi Watts, Australian actress who was becoming big Hollywood star, has handled her role very well. The rest of the cast wasn’t that good. Martin Henderson, who plays protagonist’s husband, looks too much like a fashion model and the viewers, at least those more experienced, might have unpleasant impression that they are watching Hollywoodised version of the “real thing”. Young David Dorfman, on the other hand, tries a little bit too hard to act like Haley Joel Osment did in The Sixth Sense. The film actually tries too hard to “borrow” style and content from other, better known horror films, especially those that were popular in recent times, like The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project, and one scene even looks taken from Luis Buñuel’s silent classic Un chien andalou. The biggest problem is the ending, which tries compromise between remaining open and following Hollywood conventions with “neat” wrapping of the story. The Ring is, despite its flaws, good film, and the audience agreed, making it into major box office hit. Two sequels were made - Ring Two in 2005 and Rings in 2017.

RATING: 5/10 (++)