THE RING (2002) *

I went to a horror convention back in the summer of 2002 and there was a vendor who had piles of unmarked VHS tapes for free.  I took my copy home and played it on the old VCR (RIP) and it turned out to be the black and white tape featured in The Ring.  It was a great promotional gimmick, and like many of you, I went out and saw the movie on opening night.  Unfortunately, that old tape is infinitely scarier than anything in the actual movie. 

I hated The Ring when it first came out.  I probably hate it more now in retrospect due to the fact that it spawned an entire genre of Little Ghost Girls on a Bad Hair Day horror movies.  That is to say, American remakes of Asian horror movies.  Every few months during the ‘00s, one of these turds like The Grudge, Pulse, and Dark Water would land in multiplexes, much to the chagrin of true horror fans wanting a REAL horror movie.  

At least this flick solidified Naomi Watts as a leading lady.  It was a big hit, so she was able to generate a career from it.  She’s not exactly good in it, but she looks hot.  The only thing saving The Ring from a No Stars review is the fact she’s in almost every scene and since she’s so easy on the eyes I couldn’t bear to give it anything less.  

After all these years, it still pains me to say that a guy named “Gore” Verbinski directed a horror movie that had absolutely no gore in it.  I still can’t believe it.  I liked his Lone Ranger flick, and one or two of the Pirate movies are okay, but his horror films are just total crap.  I will say the opening sequence is effective.  However, the payoff is utter shit, and the rest of the movie just gets worse as it goes along.

That’s not even getting to the stupid “rules” of the movie.  If you watch a haunted videotape, you receive a mysterious phone call, and then seven days later, you die.  The villain is even worse.  Little Ghost Girls have never been, nor will they ever be scary.  The only good part is when a horse gets eaten by a boat, but even that’s not all that great. 

Like, The Sixth Sense, it’s also a Creepy Kid movie.  No, I’m not just talking about the Ghost Girl, I’m talking about the kid who plays Watts’ son.  He’s one of those cliched precocious, wide-eyed, know-it-all, annoying-as-fuck brats.  Not only that, but the kid delivers what is probably the worst child performance in the history of film.  After his first line of dialogue, I was already rooting for the Ghost Girl to drag his ass down the well. 

Here’s a hint to just how dumb this movie is.  When you play the DVD, there’s a tape roll during the FBI Warning label to make you think the DVD is haunted.  However, only a VHS tape would do that.  A DVD would just freeze up or get pixelated if there was something wrong with it.  The target audience (it’s one of those useless PG-13 horror movies) is probably too stupid to realize the difference.