The Ring (2002)

October 18, 2002

FILM REVIEW; Don't Touch 'Play'! It Could Be Fatal

By ELVIS MITCHELL Published: October 18, 2002 ''Before you die, you see 'The Ring,' '' as the ads for this American remake of a famous Japanese suspense film tell us. With ads like this, the movie has certainly built up a lot of anticipation. But while impressively made, this impassive and cold feature fails, in a spectacular fashion, to deliver the thrills. The film, which opens nationwide today, is about an urban legend that has come to life: whenever a mysterious, unlabeled videotape is run, its unlucky viewer gets a phone call just after seeing it. The voice on the other end of the phone says simply, ''Seven days.'' It's how long the viewer has to live -- and the corpse looks like something out of a Francis Bacon daydream. When her niece dies after seeing the tape, Rachel (Naomi Watts), a Seattle reporter, decides to investigate the rumors. And that's when ''The Ring'' begins its downward spiral. She watches the freakout videotape, which looks like a director's cut of ''Closer,'' the video that starred the band Nine Inch Nails, complete with suffering animals, a fly crawling across the screen and staticridden flash cuts. As music-video effluvia goes, this tape is not even as unnerving as the outfits Lenny Kravitz wears to the VH1 fashion awards. Much of what follows consists of close-ups of the clues that Rachel, desperate to beat the clock and stay alive, sifts through to solve the mystery. The screen-filling shots of newspaper headlines and photographs chronicling the grisly deaths could be from a different kind of horror movie: ''Night of the Working Dead,'' starring Nancy Drew. Initially, Ms. Watts, the versatile star of David Lynch's ''Mulholland Drive,'' does a fine job of communicating Rachel's off-putting toughness. Under the best of circumstances, she scares everyone but her son, Aidan (David Dorfman), and based on the dark circles under his eyes and his solemn, old-man's enunciation, he's got problems of his own. But once it becomes clear that tight-jawed anxiety is surprisingly the only note on her piano, the movie feels numbed. Eventually, the phone calls don't even generate the anxiety of telemarketer hits that come during dinnertime. The director, Gore Verbinski, stages the opening with a tribute to ''Scream,'' which itself was a tribute to ''When a Stranger Calls'' -- the first scam thriller in which every single scare was in the

movie's trailer. Perhaps the most puzzling thing about ''The Ring'' is that it seems to assume that horror-movie audiences have no memory. David Dorfman, with his ''Village of the Damned'' haircut and precocious maturity, seems to have studied at the Haley Joel Osment School of Fine Acting. Though there are a few chilling moments -- one big scene involving a horse on a ferry is spectacular -- everything in ''The Ring'' feels recycled, including the picture's look and tone, which are reminiscent of ''The Blair Witch Project.'' ''Ringu,'' the Japanese original of ''The Ring,'' preceded and probably inspired ''Blair Witch.'' Copies of the director Hideo Nakata's 1997 cult classic have made the underground circuit like the deadly videotape that fills the center of the plot of ''The Ring.'' ''Ringu'' felt like an era-defining scare picture: whispers about its imminent remake have been drifting through chat rooms since word of its existence first made it to America. But the real spark came from the ''Closer'' video. And ''Closer,'' the director Mark Romanek's grim, romanticized nightmare, with its well-appointed nihilism -- honey dripped over Buuel -- was the perfect integration of visuals and the morose showmanship of the Nails leader Trent Reznor. At least the channeling of ''Ringu'' in ''The Ring'' is reverent. Unfortunately, there are other problems. Mr. Verbinski can assemble a movie like a machine, which worked for the scare comedy ''Mouse Hunt.'' But here, the mechanical assembly simply emphasizes how devoid of feeling the film is. One particular scene is just such a hollow set piece: a mentally handicapped young man pushes himself backward on a carousel while yet another crucial nugget of plot information is delivered. ''The Ring'' is there to be admired instead of to creep you out. There's also much huffing and puffing to add a psychological underpinning to the plot. Yet after the opening sequence -- well acted by Amber Tamblyn and Rachael Bella as targets of the killer tape -- ''The Ring'' mostly drags along until its climax. In trying to give the movie narrative plausibility, the makers have diluted it. ''Ringu'' doesn't make a great deal of sense either, but instead has a swift ruthlessness that borders on cruelty. ''The Ring'' also rejects the fear-of-girls stain that covered its original. The cinematographer Bojan Bazelli does tone up the bleary-eyed interiors -- the movie's color scheme is ''Exorcist'' green and rotting-plaster white -- but it doesn't make much difference; rather, it just exaggerates the relentless sameness. The Seattle location must have been chosen for its sunless, drizzly skies; there are so many shots of car windows weeping with rain that theaters should pass out squeegees. This seems to be the season for horror movies that are basically teases -- offering a promise of a good scare and then running away before delivering. ''The Ring'' is just one more in that cycle. ''The Ring'' is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It includes violence, blood, animal endangerment and spooky distant rumbling on its soundtrack. THE RING Directed by Gore Verbinski; written by Ehren Kruger, based on the novel by Koji Suzuki and the

motion picture by the Hideo Nakata; director of photography, Bojan Bazelli; edited by Craig Wood; music by Hans Zimmer; production designer, Tom Duffield; produced by Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald; released by DreamWorks Pictures. Running time: 115 minutes. This film is rated PG-13. WITH: Naomi Watts (Rachel), Martin Henderson (Noah), David Dorfman (Aidan), Brian Cox (Richard Morgan), Jane Alexander (Dr. Grasnik), Lindsay Frost (Ruth), Amber Tamblyn (Katie) and Rachael Bella (Becca).