|
Advertisement |
Overall Rating
 Awesome: 46.58%
Worth A Look: 21.92%
Average: 14.04%
Pretty Bad: 7.53%
Total Crap: 9.93%
12 reviews, 220 user ratings
|
|
| Ring, The (2002) |
by Dust For Eyes
"Runs rings around most remakes"
|
It’s remake time with The Ring - A redraft of the Japanese hair-raiser from a couple of years ago. The Ring keeps the scares and unease and while missing some strengths of the original it comes up as a winner.Remakes are fraught with serious time wasting disasters and money burning for the film-makers and viewers alike. Most of the remakes come from Hollywood and it seems they are made to either appease those who run in fear if they have to read sub-titles or simply to make money from someone else’s idea.
Which would be fine if only they made decent remakes, but they don’t. The rule seems to be to identify all the zest, power and spirit of the original and then burn it. Throw in some career-on-the-rocks celeb, a director whose CV includes a Disney film or something and, hey presto! Cinema Killing!
Bucking that trend lately though was the excellent Insomnia. And now we’ve got The Ring. A remake of the Japanese cult fave Ringu and it does a rather good job as well.
Rachel (Watts) is a journalist who investigates a series of deaths that mysteriously involve watching a video. Is it cursed? Is it a killer? Is it a James Cameron film? Whatever way, people end up dead within seven days. Her investigations lead her to finding a tape and she takes a look.
The Ring takes one of the central themes of Ringu and gets rid of it completely. It’s a shame because it’s a great theme. Ringu gradually develops a feeling of empathy for the spirit that is central to the story. (Ringu director, Hideo Nakata, takes this theme further and far more successfully in the similarly squelchy, Dark Water). In The Ring that theme gets turned on its head completely.
The ring does do a better job than the original in explaining itself. While in Ringu you had no doubt that you were scared out of your wits and wet pants, you nevertheless didn’t quite know precisely why.
In these post-modern, post-horror, post-Scream, post-yeahwhateverdude times, The Ring takes itself deadly seriously. There’s no genre in-jokes, no self-aware wry lines. It’s all straight down the line Oh-my-God-it’s-out-to-get-me. And the film is better for it. It concentrates on the story, performances and on scaring you.
There’s a nice touch in the beginning of The Ring. During the production company logo ID we see a hint of video tracking noise coming onto a screen. This is the film’s only concession of being an in-on-it film.
Gore Verbinski has taken the original to improve its coherence and pacing. The effects are minimal and shown with restraint. Rachel is pleasingly complex with her conflicting motivations and behaviour.
Naomi Watts as Rachel is again excellent in a genre that usually begs for atrocious, wooden, excuses for acting and career-ending decisions. Instead Watts’ tone-perfect performance and charismatic presence in The Ring should continue her rise in stardom for this talented actress.
Ringu (and its sequel that was released in the same year) was an ultra low budget number and that helped with the tone of the film in keeping things dirty, loose and scary. The Ring is a bit more money and the glossiness that the bigger budget allows does reduce some of the rawness of the original.
Is it as scary as the original? Well the videotape film is just as creepy and disturbing and there are some moments of genuine unease. Maybe not quite to the level of Ringu, but it definitely has its moments of seat clenching tension. Both work on making the viewer feel uneasy rather than merely frightened.With its tighter script, accomplished acting and direction, The Ring should satisfy those who saw the original and give a suitably fun unpleasant experience for those who like their scares.
 del.icio.us 
link directly to this review at http://efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=6233&reviewer=166
originally posted: 11/11/02 09:21:40
![[printer]](/images/icon/printer.gif) printer-friendly format
|
Horror Remakes: For more in the Horror Remakes series, click here.
|
 |
USA
18-Oct-2002 (PG-13)
DVD: 08-Mar-2005
UK
N/A
Australia
14-Nov-2002
|
|
Articles 
subscribe to this feed
![[AllPosters.com]](/images/icon/ap.gif){kind=icon}
