The
one group of people who wear The Ring
are those who are not shown on the screen. The
cast is wonderful, and Naomi Watts and David
Dorfman’s performances are excellent, but the
producer, director, and cinematographer are the
ones who molded the entire film. The end result
isn’t anything masterful, but the material held
my interests from start to finish. The content
presented in front of me wasn’t even that
entertaining, but if you are to look at the way
the actual filmmaking is done, the piece appears
to be a surprisingly skillful work. The
Ring is similar to fear dot com;
its production is more admirable than its true
substance, though this luckily manages to
accomplish a lot more than any “fear” website.
You
see the ring. You die. The story is about a
video tape that has the potential to make a
person die. If you watch the entire tape, your
phone rings and a woman announces that you have
seven days to live, which is the truth. There is
no evidence to conclude that the video is the
thing making all of its victims die; no doctor
in the universe can explain why their systems
are just, suddenly stopping. That is, until a
journalist named Rachel Keller’s (Naomi Watts)
niece dies and her son claims that her late
relative told him that she knew her life was
coming to an end. He had been drawing pictures
of dead people in school even up to a week
before she passed, the amount of time you have
to live after you see the strange and mysterious
video tape. Mrs. Keller stays on the case for a
while in hopes of gaining new information, and
then ends up watching the video for herself when
her curiosity overpowers what her brain can
handle. Will she die or find a way to beat this
unknown of force? As the film moves on we
discover tons of more shocking facts about the
background of the video tape and how it was
created, and come to be fully absorbed in some
rather startling plot developments along the
way.
As
stated in the first paragraph, the production
crew made a terrific flick from a theatrical
standpoint, which is ultimately why I am
recommending it. Director Gore Verbinski and
cinematographer Bojan Bazelli birthed some great
camerawork that I am very fond of. I
particularly enjoyed a shot where multiple
cameras smoothly moved over a bridge that
Watts’
character drove over, and then quickly faded
into an aerial shot of the same vehicle on the
main road. Verbinski and Bazelli’s work with the
film was ground-breaking, but they were not the
best of all, that is a title that goes to
producer Benita Allen-Honess, whose work was in
a word - inspiring. The way she made the
beautifully cut scene transitions that went
along with the gorgeous direction and
cinematography was wonderful. Also, the bizarre
and contrastive “ring” scenes that she birthed
were undeniably creepy because of the way their
interesting cuts were put together. All of these
aspects work stunningly with the great
screenplay that I also admire.
This
might sound “cheap” or dishonest, but I truly
think that this film could’ve benefited from an
“R” rating. The filmmakers cut it down to a
“PG-13” because they did not want to lose their
target audience, teenagers. The grisly images
and creepy gore combined with some fairly
explicit dialogue already stretched the rating,
but this is one of the few cases where I can say
that they needed more of it. I didn’t want to
see gore in specific while watching it, but I
wanted some more background information, and in
order to do so, they would have to add more
violence. The decision to cut the flick to a
PG-13 rating was the more marketable of the two
options, but was definitely not the best for the
movie.
The Ring
works as light, but good quality entertainment
that produces quite a few good scares. The
production, direction, and cinematography were
definitely the overall highlights of the film,
but the performances are good as well. The most
admirable element of the story itself is that it
never takes shortcuts and leaves intentional
plot holes to make us about unfinished events.
This eventually ends up adding quite a some
great little scares to the already suspenseful
material, and allows me to compliment the
screenplay, too. If you’re not looking for a
masterpiece, and have set you’re expectations to
the right level,
The Ring
will work as mysterious, but short-lived
entertainment. But if you aren’t, don’t bother
because you will just find it to be an
unnecessary repeat of tired, cheesy material;
though letting the stupidity get to you is
really half the fun.
-Danny, Bucket
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