The Ring - stars Naomi Watts (aussie aussies aussie...)

When was the last time you jumped in the cinema? Man, this was cool for that stuff, loads of scary bits in there for me. Take into account I'm the only person any of you know that gets scared in a movie (according to you's), so me sitting here telling you how much it made me jump, is probably yawn material for you. That said...

In a nutshell, Rachael (Watts) is a reporter. Her niece gets dead in a nasty way and her son takes it pretty badly and spends his days drawing horrible pictures at school. Rachael finds out that before her niece died, she watched a video depicting some pretty whacked out images, then her phone rang straight after she finished watching it. A voice told her she'd be dead in 7 days. Bugger. Rachael's sister implores her to try and find out what happened to her daughter, this leads her to discovering the video tape, watching it, getting the phone call and then spending the next 7 days trying to save her ass. The horror ensues...but not without a few hiccups.

I'm going to go to town here folks which may give bits and pieces away. If you haven't seen it and want to, stop reading now! Ok, first of all, where'd the tape come from? Lets ignore that for a tic, if you watched the tape, got the call and became a believer, would you show the father of your child the tape? Leave it lying around the house, say within reach of your curious son who digs watching late night vids? Aaaalrighty then.

Skipping well ahead and Rachael is much closer to solving this thing, we find out about a seemingly cursed family who couldn't successfully carry a baby to term, all of a sudden having one and then the whole place getting turned upside down. Horses commit suicide, everyone gets sick, local economy goes to the shit, I mean its chaos over there. All because of this child that was finally born to the parents that couldn't have any. Now, why couldn't she have any? And why was the daughter such a psycho as a result? I can't help but feel this is somehow genetic, yet this question doens't get answered. There's just a psycho girl bringing back luck to everyone and everything around her. So the mother offs the daughter thinking that'll fix shit, then off's herself from the guilt. Dad's a rock, he's still alive today, er, anyway you'll see. So many questions!

I shouldn't be too critical, I mean we're only really finding out stuff at the same pace that our heroes do, but throw us a bone, c'mooooon! And I'm all for the audience having to work some stuff out by themselves, but when you're this far out on a limb, the imagination is not something we want to rely on.

I actually thought the plot was the film's sticking point, it starts really slow and struggles to get itself off the ground. I guess its going to be a hard task to bring a "new" urban legend to the big screen and have everyone "get it" in the first ten minutes so it can then move on. For anyone that made themsevles sit through "Jeepers Creepers", you'll a) know what I'm talking about, and b) never get that 90-or-so minutes of your life back! Once its going though, it cruises along quite nicely, but you really have to get over things like the video tape and where it came from and how does this tape know your phone number!

This is actually a remake, the original being a Japanese film by the name of Ringu which was released in 1998, and somehow this has escaped most of the Hollywoodisms that normally get bundled in to make it more appealing. The fact I think its completely the opposite is a moot point. But this stays a little bit indie in feel, despite being as beautiful to watch as any big-budget flick. Brilliant use of light and colour, very very lush yet very dark.

And very very anonymous. If you can follow this, they've filmed it like it could be anywhere, its not necessarily America, its not necessarily specifically here or there, its just "anywhere", get me? I mean you look at the "world" getting invaded by aliens and its always happening in New York right? Well here's a buck in the trend. This could be Park Bench, Greenland for all this film cares. A classic example is during a particularly poignant scene where Rachael is standing on her balcony as her erstwhile partner watches the tape inside. She looks to be quite a few stories up in an apartment complex, and everything around her looks exactly the same, nothing to distinguish her building or apartment from the next one. Its actually quite a pointless scene as far as the movie itself goes (and you get Rear Window flashbacks from it) but its just a brilliant piece of filming which adds to the anonymity it projects.

Anyhoo, I won't go into what scares you and what doesn't because, once again, it'll just be me. I'm just glad I wasn't holding the popcorn at the time. Despite a few facts spoiling a good story, its a doozy in the pins and needles section, I'm giving it 3 and a half.

Here's to seeing something half decent at the flicks.

BH