It’s sad to me how The Ring has
fallen out of public awareness. I think the only parodies I’ve
seen of it since the beginning of the decade have been jokes about
how outdated VHS technology is. That’s sad, because there are so
many other sequences in this film that deserve a place in popular
consciousness. Disregarding the girl coming out of the television,
there’s also the suicidal horse and the guy electrocuting himself
with a horse bit in his mouth. (...If ever a scene has screamed
“spoof me!” that was it.) But no! All anyone remembers about
this genuinely creepy film is that they used VHS tapes to transmit
the curse.
The story is that a tape has somehow
started circulating with a series of bizarre images on it. Anyone
who watches the video immediately gets a phone call, telling them
that they will die in seven days... and so, they die. A journalist,
played by Naomi Watts, watches the tape, and finds herself exploring
the mystery of its origin. The search becomes more desperate after
her young son (David Dorfman) sees the video by mistake, dooming him
as well.
The eventual revelation is that a young
girl named Samara (Daveigh Chase), with psychic powers, was thrown in
a well by her mother, having driven the mother insane, and is lashing
out at anyone who watches the tape. I understand that the original
Japanese novel had far more in the way of explanation for how all
this was possible, but it’s hardly necessary. In my ghost stories,
I really don’t expect the ghosts to act rationally; the ghost of a
deeply disturbed psychic girl least of all.
The movie serves mainly as a set-up to
a series of horrific events, some caused directly by Samara, some in
reaction to her. To list them all would waste a great deal of space
on plot summary. Most of these events serve only to illustrate one
basic point; Samara’s life sucked, but it sucked mainly because
people were, quite reasonably, afraid of her. Her father raised
horses which panicked when she was around and her mother received
horrifying visions. Eventually, she was locked up in a psychiatric
institute, filled with people who refused to believe the blatantly
obvious fact that she had psychic powers and accused her of lying
when she told them the truth.
This leads to a final twist: Samara
was, and still is, evil. Even once her body is retrieved from the
well, she continues her curse. The only escape is to copy the tape
and show it to someone else. It’s something of a bizarre
anti-twist, and you can debate how well it actually works. On the
one hand, the film was clearly building towards the suggestion that
Samara was an innocent little girl, and it seems a little too
simplistic to close by saying she’s a cackling, Evil Bitch. On the
other hand however, the idea that she was a helpless little girl was
so thoroughly telegraphed and fully expected that it’s hard to deny
that her being the exact opposite is shocking. And she had enough
control over the events leading up to the finale that you can easily
argue she manipulated the protagonists, and by extension the
audience, into seeing what she wanted them to.
I’m not sure what I have to say about
the final moments of the film. Naomi Watts’ character decides to
save her son by having him make a copy of the film to show to someone
else. The movie doesn’t go out of its way to condemn or condone
this, just acknowledging that it is indeed the only way to save the
child.
Above all, this movie holds the
distinction of actually being visually different in a world of horror
movies that all look the same. I at least partially attribute this
to the fact that the movie actually had a surprisingly large budget
by the standards of horror movies, so that it wasn’t limited to
tiny sets, could afford known actors and its special effects
consisted of more than splattering blood everywhere.
Watch the movie. Watch it and don’t
talk about VHS tapes. This movie is awesome, and the format
by which the curse is passed is unimportant.
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