Something of a cult favourite, Hideo Nakata's Ringu (1998) was a masterclass in low budget horror filmmaking, a movie which was a genuinely unnerving experience thanks to the ingenuity of the writer director and his quick witted screenplay. The premise was ripe for a Hollywood remake - an urban legend tells of an unmarked video tape which has catastrophic results for all those who watch it. Immediately after seeing several minutes of unnerving footage, the viewer receives a phone call. Seven days after that, he or she dies with their face vividly contorted to reflect some hideous terror. After her niece dies in mysterious circumstances - believed to be connected to the legend - journalist Rachel (Watts) promises her bereaved sister that she will try and find out what happened. That search for the truth leads her to finding the video and having a peek at it, which means she is also cursed. Setting out to solve the mystery of the Ring before it's too late; she enlists the aid of the father of her ultra sensitive son and gets to work.
While Hollywood has a terrible tradition of foreign language remakes, the well rendered Ring is better than expected. There are major faults, though. Although the premise of Nakata's Ringu is fairly closely adhered to, the plotting becomes too self consciously dense, too fussy in its desperation to cover every base at the expense of the narrative's fluidity. Verbinski is a very competent filmmaker but a director with a little more intensity when it comes to atmospherics and the central dynamics of the story would have benefited The Ring a great deal. That all said, it's far from a shabby excursion and The Ring has quite a bit of bite to it. But do check out the original. On video, preferably.
