The Ring
Not a good movie, not bad movie, it somewhere in between, but better than average. Did that make any sense? My main complaint is the abundance of unanswered questions. Not to give anything away, but by the end of the movie, you'll have a nice list of these.
The Ring starts out with a dialogue between two teenage girls, one which strikingly reminded me of Jackie (Deborah Van Valkenburgh) from the early 80's sitcom Too Close For Comfort, who discuss the urban legend aspects of a certain videotape. The story goes like this: After you watch it, you'll get a mysterious phone call, then you die seven days later.
It's a rather intriguing concept for a movie, and apparently was done before in Japan, because I keep running into reviews like, "It's not as good as the Japanese version". Whatever. Okay, so maybe the ten people who have seen the original don't like this new version, but for the rest of us who don't have a craving for Japanese cinema or tentacle schoolgirl porn, let it go. Not that I know what tentacle schoolgirl porn is. I'm just saying.
The first five minutes or so are a good setup for the rest of the movie, which is an investigative journey on the origins of this tape. To a certain extent, they do a good job, but the history behind the tape holds even more questions. Before you even ask, yes, you do get to see the video.
There are some genuinely creepy moments, and some good ol' fashioned cheat...I mean cheap scares. At a runtime of a little less than two hours, they could've definitely trimmed down the time, and still get in the same elements of the story. I also got the impression that the director just got done watching Stir Of Echoes before filming this one, as there are a few similarities. I was actually kind of surprised at the PG-13 rating. The only thing keeping it from being rated R is language. Definitely worth the price of admission.
