Urban Legend Meets Surrealism
This Ring is Tarnished

I'll admit up front that I went to see The Ring with very high expectations. A friend told me (isn't that the way these urban legends get started?) that when she saw this movie, a man in the theater screamed like a 12-year-old girl and ran out of the theater never to return. A story like that is likely to raise expectations.

Unfortunately, The Ring (directed by Gore Verbinski) is little more than a creepy movie. It is a shame, because this movie has so much going for it. In the hands of a better director, this could have been the most gut-wrenching movie since Se7en.

Based on the novel Ringu by Kôji Suzuki, The Ring revolves around an urban legend that watching a certain videotape will kill you and a reporter who attempts to link four high school students' deaths. Naomi Watts (Mulholland Dr.) plays the reporter, Rachel Keller, who is trying to link her niece to the three other students. One high school girl, now in a mental ward, believes the prime suspect in these strange deaths is a videotape.

Soon, Rachel finds and views the tape for herself. The video is a mixture of out-of-sequence black and white images that seem unconnected. Some of the images are haunting, while others are surreal. Rachel's ex-husband, Noah (Martin Henderson), compares it to a student's experimental film project. If you've ever seen Luis Buñuel's Un Chien Andalou, you might have an idea what to expect.

Until this point, the film is mostly setup. The shocks have been (for the most part) cheap thrills. With the viewing of the tape, the film turns away from being merely a "scary movie" and becomes more. The videotape is a mystery to be solved. With Noah, Rachel begins to investigate the images she saw in the tape, tying them to a real woman who had died many years ago. The unraveling story is far more curious than horrific, but it is intriguing.

Thrown into the mix is a child, Rachel's son Aidan, played by David Dorfman. (You can't have a really creepy movie without a weird child.) Aidan has been greatly affected by the death of his cousin, but it is clear early on that his issues started before her death. Dorfman --with his wide eyes and calm, adult manner -- is positively freaky. If his head had started to spin while he screamed "Redrum!" I would have thought it only natural. As weird kids in movies go, I'd rank him up there. He is truly alien.

The Ring has been compared to The Exorcist and Rosemary's Baby, but it is not even close to being that scary. Too be honest, I was more creeped out by The Sixth Sense and The Blair Witch Project. At best, this is an interesting movie with a creepy underlying theme.

MY RATING: 5 out of 10.

RATED: PG-13
RUN TIME: 115 min.