| Posted by: NotKeyserSoze at February 24, 2004, 12:31 pm | | Topic: Reviews: The Ring Forum: JoBlo | | --Sing the "Spoilers" song!-- Amid the tedious procession of teen slashers, where brainless bimbos get hacked apart by slowly plodding invincible monsters, now and again a hyped-up "classic" comes along. Final Destination got the praise, though it just happened to be funnier than the average slasher flick. The Blair Witch Project deserved the title, thanks to actually producing scares rather than "jump" moments. "The Ring" is the latest film to get people clapping in druid-like unison, and while it's okay, I can't say I was wildly impressed. The story is both pleasantly simple (watch a video and you'll be dead in 7 days) and rather bafflingly vague (who made it? what exactly does the little girl do?), and the fact that the heroine has 6 days to wander around wondering what's happening - without being in any actual danger - makes the whole thing very drawn out and slow. She has the most impossibly creepy child ever seen in a horror film (I include Linda Blair in that) and a very average unshaven Hollywood boyfriend. Yawn. Yes he gets it, and yes he had it coming. The video itself is just warped enough (in a sort of David Lynch way) to unnerve you, but precisely why people watch it (and sit so damned close to the screen) remains a mystery. The final idea, that you have to copy the thing to avoid death, is an oddly technical way of avoiding the effects of an undead psychic girl. Still, it beats most horror cheat-endings. The ending is a mess. Tons of false-finales fly by in much the same way as Return of the King, only to give up and start another final reel, as the girl is revealed for the first time. Her hideous appearance (those eyes!) and the slack-jawed corpses she creates are surprisingly eerie, but in a very blatant, special-effects-ey way. There is some subtlety, in that the really nasty bits happen in fleeting flash-cuts. And the music is weird. But a genuine atmosphere of dread would be better served with a likeable, more interesting heroine. In no way deserving of the hero-worship it's received, and certainly not in need of a sequel (but then, everything gets a sequel these days), The Ring is another watchable, slightly eerie horror movie. But it's still only a tiny step in the right direction, and if Hollywood continues to produce formula-stuck horrors then we might as well give up watching them. 4/10 |
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