The
Ring’ elicits feelings of anticipation
By Jack Schneider
On-line Forty-Niner
Dead
horses, freakish wells and centipedes may
seem like random and unrelated items, but
all play an eerie part in the new DreamWorks
thriller “The Ring,” based on the 1998 smash
Japanese film “Ringu.”
Director Gore Verbinski, whose previous
works include the family film “Mouse Hunt”
and the Hollywood-friendly movie, “The Mexican,”
takes a break from focusing on laughter
and deals instead with the weird and the
bizarre, making audiences shriek in anticipation.
Rachael Keller, played fiercely by Naomi
Watts from “Mulholland Drive,” is an investigative
reporter, looking into four related teenage
deaths. All four teenagers died within seven
days of watching a video filled with nightmarish
images.
Keller gets ahold of the film and watches
it with fear and confusion. Later the video
falls into the hands of her friend Noah,
(Martin Henderson of “Windtalkers”) and
her son Aidan (David Dorfman). Aidan is
both innocent and creepy, similar to Haley
Joel Osment in “The Sixth Sense.”
Once Noah and Aidan have seen the film,
the countdown for their deaths begins and
it is up to the heroine Keller to save their
lives by tracking down where the video was
made and the method behind its madness.
The suspense in “The Ring” isn’t excessive
or overly dramatic and the film never gets
catapulted into a level of ultimate terror.
The avant-garde imagery of the videotape
and the bleak colors of the rainy Pacific
Northwest add a mysterious feel to the movie,
but the overall acting and relationship
between the three main characters is vague
and mediocre. There is always a sense of
anticipation of what the story will become.
But while this sometimes leads to a freakish
conclusion, other times it just leads to
more anticipation.
Overall, the film had its ups and downs
in terms of suspense, but it may make a
name for itself in the world of modern Hollywood
horror.
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