THE RING

Unsuspecting viewers insert a video and reach for the popcorn, only to learn from a killer tape that they are about to die.

CAST: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, Brian Cox, David Dorfman, Daveigh Chase

DIRECTOR: Gore Verbinski

"‘The Ring’ is a horror film built around a videotape so sinister that anyone who watches it dies in seven days. The best thing about the movie, which is a very elegantly crafted piece of gothic snuff hokum, is the way it teases and intrigues us with the revelation of what's on that tape…Naomi Watts, coming off her triumphant good girl/nasty girl performance in ‘Mulholland Drive,’ proves that she can hold the screen every bit as enticingly in a conventional genre thriller. Blond, full-lipped, and wholesomely sensual, with a rare ability to make fear look strong, Watts has a live-wire charisma reminiscent of the young Debra Winger." --Owen Gleiberman, Entertainment Weekly

"Rarely has a more serious effort produced a less serious result than in ‘The Ring,’ the kind of dread dark horror film where you better hope nobody in the audience snickers, because the film teeters right on the edge of the ridiculous. Enormous craft has been put into the movie, which looks just great, but the story goes beyond contrivance into the dizzy realms of the absurd." --Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times

"While impressively made, this impassive and cold feature fails, in a spectacular fashion, to deliver the thrills…Though there are a few chilling moments, everything in ‘The Ring’ feels recycled, including the picture's look and tone, which are reminiscent of ‘The Blair Witch Project’…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." --Elvis Mitchell, The New York Times

"Just plain stupid is a suitable appellation for ‘The Ring,’ an English language version of "Ringu," the Japanese predecessor. Scary? Perhaps, if you are frightened by ultra silly imagery, ghastly faces of the dead and elementary weirdness. Sooner or later, a video was bound to emerge on film as a supernatural killer. When ‘The Ring’ goes to video, you may want to avoid it, not as a killer, but as the bore it already is on the big screen." --William Wolf, Wolf Entertainment Guide

" ‘The Ring's’ shrewd premise is fueled not only by the omnipresence of video copies that turn up in our lives from who knows where, but also by a particularly modern feeling of powerlessness, by a sense that forces out of our control have a profound and unhappy effect on our lives. One of the keys to making ‘The Ring’ work as well as it does is the strong performance by Watts, who came to prominence with her dual role in David Lynch's ‘Mulholland Drive.’ It's up to her to lend credibility to this strange scenario, and her presence succeeds in making us believe." --Kenneth Turan, The Los Angeles Times