The Ring: Freaky Piece of Dark Artwork

I originally heard about The Ring from friends, who all said one collective thing: "That was the freakiest movie I have ever seen." A few weeks later, I huddled in a dark student apartment with three friends and gave collective gasps as it ran. I came to agree that The Ring is exceedingly freaky, but it is a film experience that anyone who appreciates good movies should see. The film is a disturbing combination of gore and things that go bump in the night that should not have been rated PG-13, but it was no less amazing.

In The Ring, a teenage girl dies under mysterious circumstances and her aunt Rachel (Naomi Watts), a newspaper reporter, becomes obsessed with trying to find the cause. Her investigation leads her to a cabin that her niece and three other friends stayed in, and she finds an unmarked videotape laden with gruesome images. When the tape ends, the phone rings and a voice on the other end says, "Seven days." The conclusion is made that whoever sees the tape will die a horrible death within seven days. Rachel goes on a search to find out the forces responsible for the tape and save her life and the lives of her young son and ex-husband in the process.

The Ring is less of a typical film and more like a piece of dark artwork. The visuals are bathed in dim light with a blue tinge. The dialogue and actions are dark and serious. Director Gore Verbinski sets up these elements to make the film a surreal experience that immediately sucks the audience in to this highly disturbing world. The true mood setter is the video itself, which is loaded with images of death and discomfort that makes it closely resemble a Nine Inch Nails video. Any hope of a light and happy movie completely dies here and takes the viewer down a spiral that has to lead somewhere not so nice.

The Ring's strongest appeal is its masterfully executed suspense. When everything looks calm, there is probably a disturbing image just a few seconds away and this film is saturated with them. However, the many jarring scenes are not done gratuitously and play on human fear in a very creative way. I will not reveal any of the many visual twists that seem to come from no where, but those who do not enjoy such surprises should be warned that there are a lot of them. The Ring is nothing short of a masterpiece of visual effects, plot twists, cinematography, and plain suspense. Its weakest points lie within its characters, which only seem to be there to experience this cinematic hell and have few to no points of their own. The biggest exception is the reoccurring appearance of a scary little girl who is the most developed character in this film.

The DVD contains deleted scenes, shown in the most creative sequence that I have ever seen deleted scenes shown in, and trailer for the original Japanese version Ringu. The Ring is a truly disturbing movie, but it is amazingly done in its many complex elements that keep the audience intrigued until the end. When the movie does end, do we feel safe knowing it was fiction, or just glad to get out of this dark world? Regardless, what evil lurks in the hearts of strange videos?