The Ring

Grade:

Plot Summary:

A mysterious videotape surfaces which causes people to die exactly seven days after they watch it. Much evocative imagery ensues...

Opinion:

I'm a cultural purist at heart when it comes to movies (not that I don't enjoy a good comic-book superhero movie on occasion). As such, I'm fairly anti-sequel and anti-remake, especially when Hollywood takes a original property from overseas and dumbs it down for the American viewing public.   I wouldn't touch the Jennifer Lopez US remake of "Shall We Dance?" with a ten-foot pole, for example. The original Japanese movie is one of my all-time favorites, and doesn't need any Hollywoodization, thank you very much.

Now, however, I have a serious quandary.

(1)  I have not seen the original Japanese horror movie "Ringu" from which this US remake "The Ring" was based.

(2)  I really, really, really like "The Ring".

I understand completely that the purists who love the original hate the fact that the remake exists (as I do with "SWD" above), simply because its existence means many people in the US will see this version and never bother viewing the original.  And, guess what, having seen the remake I haven't felt much interest in checking out the original as of yet either. Even if it is 'better', it would still regardless be the second version of the same story--with fewer surprises.  No wonder purists are mad! 

"The Ring" is an intelligent horror movie, in a genre where those two attributes do not mix very often.  "The Ring" is intelligent because it does not depend on main characters doing really stupid things in order to move the plot.  "The Ring" is intelligent because it involves a concept simple enough to summarize in one sentence ("There's this videotape that seven days after you watch it, you die!"), yet complex enough that the summary tells you very little about what the movie is actually about.  (Why, indeed, is the movie called "The Ring" and not "The Videotape"?)  "The Ring" is intelligent because it (for the most part) avoids horror movie clichés that tend to dumb down other movies--and, in fact, in a non-comedic way, parodies them.

Even if you're not a horror movie fan, you've undoubtedly seen many of these clichés:

• A heroine is standing in front of a bathroom mirror.  She opens the medicine cabinet, grabs something, closes it and *GASP* there's now someone/something standing behind her in the mirror!
• A heroine opens a refrigerator door such that the open door clearly blocks the view of the hallway beyond.  She closes the door and *GASP* there's now someone/something standing in the hallway beside her!
• A heroine walks gingerly into a darkened room.  Suddenly, something jumps out at her!  *GASP*  Oh, it's just a cat...

"The Ring" features a refrigerator scene deliberately framed where the open door neatly and completely blocks the view of the hallway beyond.  When our heroine closes the door *GASP*...nothing's there.  This scene has absolutely nothing to do with the plot, but goes to show that you're watching a different kind of horror movie this time.

The best recommendation for "The Ring", and what you're going to remember long after the movie ends, is the imagery.  Normal, everyday items are shown in the movie in unique and evocative scenes which provide their own sense of eeriness and atmosphere.  "The Ring" features:

• The Tree
• The Mirror
• The Well
• The Horse
• The Ladder

(If you've seen it, you will know exactly what I'm talking about, such that there's no need to describe any of these items with any adjective other than 'The'...)

One of my favorite scenes in the entire movie involves "The Ladder":  the main characters enter a place where there's a ladder, reaching up into the unknown.  "What's up there?", you think.  The movie has very carefully prepared this scene--both in creating an effective atmosphere of horror and anticipation that just about anything could be up that ladder, and has planted a few ideas in the audience's mind of what could be up there.  Maybe nothing is up that ladder (I'm not saying), but "The Ring" understands that true scares come from anticipation, not from surprises.  There aren't many 'scare scenes' in "The Ring" (ones that make you jump out of your seat for a second), but there are many scenes where there could be scares and the audience will never know for sure whether one is coming or not.  (The few scare scenes "The Ring" has are also well placed--you will likely not be expected them...)

"The Ring" also deftly walks the line between explaining too much, and not explaining anything at all.  There's enough progression in the story where you feel satisfied at the end, but still have a small range of unanswered questions that can be discussed afterwards.  The ending in general manages to avoid clichés as well, with neither (a) good triumphing absolutely, (b) evil triumphing absolutely, or (c) nothing being resolved at all in order to set everything up for a sequel. 

Remake or not, "The Ring" is an effective piece of filmmaking whose evocative visions and psychological scares will remain with you long afterwards...

Content Analysis: (PG-13, 3-1-3-0 on the Baron's PSVD scale)

Latter-Day Saints (even the ones who watch R-rated movies) tend to eschew horror movies as a group, but this is as good an 'introduction' to horror as LDS culture will get. It is a medium-to-light PG-13 with a few scattered profanities and very little blood. Another cliché that "The Ring" avoids is not confusing 'blood and gore' with 'horror'.  Psychological scares are always more effective than bloody payoffs, and "The Ring" creates its tension not by showing its characters meet some bloody, graphic end, just the possibility that they could at any given time.

(Semantics note: Many movies are scary, without being 'horror' movies.  Something like "The Sixth Sense", which has been widely seen, has its share of 'scare moments' and involves ghosts, but I do not consider a 'horror' movie.  I believe the key difference is that true horror involves in some way a malevolent entity which ruthlessly hunts down innocents. "The Ring" has that malevolent entity, where "The Sixth Sense", or "The Others" do not.  Ponder, if you will, that Daveigh Chase (Samara) is the same girl who provides the voice for Lilo in "Lilo & Stitch")

In-depth Analysis:

There is a thin line between explaining too much and not explaining enough, and "The Ring", in my book, hits it just about right. Unlike the thoroughly stupid "Mothman Prophecies" where the screenwriters gleefully filled the screen with a variety of weird and mysterious things, then just end the movie without having to come up with a coherent explanation for anything, "The Ring" provides enough of a background for the events that occur that it's satisfying, while still leaving a lot of things a mystery.  Where did Samara come from?  The movie narrative says her mom was barren before leaving for a time and coming back with her as a baby.  Her dad told Rachel that "my wife was never supposed to have a daughter".  Perhaps, desperate for a child, Samara's mom had kidnapped Samara from her real family (maybe murdered them, too?), which Samara--through special precognitive abilities--eventually sensed and then took revenge for on her 'mom', through supernatural means.

We see, though, while looking through Samara's records in the middle of the movie, Noah finds a birth certificate showing Samara as being the biological child to the Morgans.  Could have been forged, of course, to avoid people asking questions per the situation above, or perhaps there's other explanations.  Perhaps her mom, still desperate for a child, made a "pact with the devil" and got, in return, a "devil-child"--more than she bargained for...

And this is the point...  You can discuss possibilities, but there's no way to know...and no need to know.  I think the movie is perfectly fine as is, without needing to explain anything else.

(Yes, many of these questions may be answered by either the two Japanese sequels, or the American sequel that came out earlier this year.  Per my cultural purism above, I have not nor will I see any sequel to "The Ring"...  I may like the American remake beyond all reason, but would rather keep possibilities open in my mind, rather than have them force-fed to me through an unimaginative screen-writer, paid to come up with something in order to make a sequel to a movie that made a lot of money...  Reviews of the Japanese sequels, and the American sequel were decidedly mixed-to-negative.)

Random Notes & Comments (Spoilers!):

(1) Normally horror movies lose their effectiveness the second time one sees it. After all, you already know what happens and where the scares are... "The Ring" has a scene that, I submit, is actually more scary the second time you see it than the first.  This is the scene at the very beginning, where Katie meets her end.  The first time you see the movie, you see the water and a brief shot of the TV when Katie opens the door, but have no idea what really happened.  Once you've seen the rest of the movie, though, you do--and were you to watch this beginning scene a second time you would have a clearer mental picture of what actually happens to Katie when she opens the door, and--in my opinion--the 'horror' is increased...

(2) The deleted scenes on the DVD clarify something that's not completely clear from the theatrical cut--it's not just making a copy of the videotape that saves you, it's making a copy and having someone else watch it.  (Thus, the curse spreads like a virus from person to person...)  Otherwise you could make a copy and then simply destroy it--a loophole that I don't think is what Samara had in mind...  Not explained is whether you could get away with watching the tape, destroying it, and then accepting your death as a martyr without sharing it with anyone else--thus ending the cycle.  I would imagine Samara would just respond by 'creating' another tape...

(3) Another clarification that (reportedly) the Japanese version and the original novel make clearer:  Samara doesn't require a television in the vicinity to 'appear'--any reflective surface will do.  This explains how Katie's friends could have met their end while they were driving their car...

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