Violence/Gore: A horse gets chopped up by a boat propeller, and there are a couple of gruesome death scenes, but no real gore per se.

Sex/Nudity: Absolutely none, other than a couple of shots of Naomi Watts in her skivvies.

Best Line: “You weren’t supposed to help her!”

Score:

Everyone has their favorite urban legend - the one about the rattlesnakes in the ball pit at Wendy’s, the one about the unfortunate woman and the lobster, or even the chicken head in the chicken nuggets at McDonald’s. They’re all simple, harmless, fictional stories. However, in Gore Verbinski’s thriller, THE RING, an urban legend about a videotape that kills in seven days after watching it proves to be all too horrifyingly real.

After her niece’s mysterious death, investigative reporter Rachel Keller was skeptical of the story told by her niece’s friends about a videotape that kills you seven days after you watch it - until research reveals that her niece and three of her friends all died at exactly the same time on the same night, exactly one week after allegedly watching The Videotape. Rachel tracks down the video…and watches it. Now, Rachel’s time is running out, and she has only seven days to solve the mystery of The Ring.

Gore Verbinski’s remake of the Japanese horror masterpiece, RINGU, is a delicately-balanced combination of suspense and horror. Other than a tendency to lag a bit in places, the film rarely hits a wrong note, and proves to be both frightening and engrossing, even after multiple viewings. The screenplay, adapted by Ehren Krueger from the original Kôji Suzuki novel and Hiroshi Takahashi’s RINGU screenplay, is reminiscent of THE SIXTH SENSE, but an out-of-nowhere third act shocker twist takes the movie from the realm of the so-so into a dark hinterland of stark horror.

Cinematographer Bojan Bazelli effectively parallels the images in the tape with the images in Rachel’s life after she views it. He uses murky lighting and eliminates nearly all of the blue tones in the picture, bathing the scenes in a grim greenish-grey light to match the film’s stark mood and suicidally rainy Pacific Northwest setting. The images of The Videotape itself are a dark, grainy, disturbing homage to such seminal film classics as Luis Bunuel’s UN CHIEN ANDALOU and THE CABINET OF DR. CALIGARI.

THE RING is one of the most genuinely scary movies I’ve seen in years, and its stylish look is actually underlaid with substance so often missing from American films. Verbinski takes some potentially ridiculous subject matter and creates something disturbing, without the traditional ‘gore, sex, and giggles’ American approach to horror. The movie is virtally sexless, something that I feel adds to its strength in that the film can hold its own without it. Of course, the visuals contained in The Videotape are a big part of the events and clues that make the story click, and fall into place as Rachel begins to solve the mystery. Watching the story come together is unsettling, with the film’s moderate pace mimicking the inexorable stalking of a zombie. It’s a truly horrifying minuet of menace.

DVD Extras: This DVD has some of the nicest looking, most cleverly executed menus I’ve ever seen. The ‘Don’t Look Here’ segment contains deleted scenes cut together with images from The Videotape, making a nifty little short film. There’s no commentary, but arrowing up from the ‘Play Movie’ option reveals an easter egg that plays The Videotape. Simple, spare, clean and classic - like the rest of the film.

SS