Director: Hideo Nakata
Stars: Nanako Matsushima, Hiroyuki Sanada, Miki Nakatani, Yuko Takeuchi, Hitomi Sato
Certificate: 18
Running time: 95 minutes

The Ring was originally a low-budget Japanese horror film from 1998. However, as is often the case when a low-budget flick is successful, it has been remade for the Western world.

The basic story is of an urban legend, the type that teenagers discuss to try and scare one another. There is a videotape of a woman's nightmare. When you watch the tape, you receive a phone call at the end, and are told that you have seven days to live. If this is the case then quite why anyone would wish to view the tape is enough to ponder, but as this is essentially a horror film, then all logic pretty much flies right out the window.

After the death of her niece, single-mother Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) does a bit of investigating to find out what happened. She discovers the story of the tape, and how three of her niece's friends died at the same time on the same night. Once on the trail, the story takes on some of the usual predictable horror film parameters. The main one being that although she believes that the tape connects the deaths, she decides to watch it.

The rising-star Watts (Mulholland Drive) is quite good as Rachel. She manages to convincingly play the roles of devoted single-mother, investigative journalist, and horror-flick victim. Her portrayal almost leads the film away from being a strict horror film, and at times it seems more like a detective-style thriller.

The only other cast member that is easily recognisable is Brian Cox. He is only in the film for two or three scenes, and although he gives the type of reliable performance that film fans have come to expect from him, the inclusion of his character is pretty pointless.

Martin Henderson plays Rachel's ex-husband Noah, and is quite good too. David Dorfman plays Rachel's son Aidan, and has a spooky air about him, much like that of Haley Joel Osment in The Sixth Sense, although his performance here is not nearly as good.

Overall, I was disappointed. I'm not a big fan of horror films anyway, but I think the two key elements to a decent horror film is to be funny and not take itself too seriously, such as films like Final Destination or Idle Hands, or scary. Unfortunately this film is neither. There is a fair amount of atmosphere about it, which does help to create a spookier feel. However, The Ring misses a few decent opportunities to genuinely frighten the pants off the audience, particularly during the scenes that the story moves away and begins to feel like a thriller as opposed to a horror. As a thriller it would be workable, but for the supernatural ending. It's a film that is very much stuck between genres, not knowing which it really wishes to settle in.

If you're a horror fan, then there's nothing much here that will frighten you, and if you're a fan of thrillers, the whole supernatural theme makes it too unbelievable to be truly convincing.