The Ring
(2002)
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In Gore Verbinski's remake of Hideo Nakata's chilling horror film, a group of teenagers all die suddenly and inexplicably exactly one week after watching a mysterious videotape at a remote cabin in the Pacific Northwest. Journalist Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts), a relative of one of the victims, begins an investigation that leads to a mountain resort where she discovers the tape, which contains footage of random and surreal images. After viewing the tape, Rachel receives a phone call stating that she, too, has seven days left to live. As the clock ticks away, Rachel enlists the help of her former boyfriend Noah (Martin Henderson), who is the father of her startlingly serious young son Aidan (David Dorfman). Assisted by the intuitive illustrations of Aidan and the initially reluctant research of Noah, Rachel attempts to discover the significance of the cryptic tape before her time is up. |
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The words “Hollywood remake” may fill film fans with dread — foreign language movies ruined by a refit for the multiplex crowd — but Mousehunt director Gore Verbinski's version of Hideo Nakata's Japanese horror classic is a surprisingly good effort that retains much of the unnerving, creepy atmosphere of the original. An unlabelled videotape is in circulation, bringing death after seven days to anyone who watches it. One of its victims is the niece of journalist Naomi Watts, who decides to uncover the source of the tape and find out whether this “curse” is real, a quest that's given added urgency after Watts chooses to view the video herself. Verbinski makes a couple of inventive additions — a horse going berserk on a car ferry is a brilliantly surreal innovation — and although the spine-chilling terror of the original is muted by the overuse of CGI, this is still a worthy substitute if you're not in the mood for subtitles.