Monday, November 30, 2009

The Ring



(2002) *****

“Ninety percent of science fiction is crap,” legendary sci-fi author Theodore Sturgeon (1918-1985) once admitted, “but then, ninety percent of everything is crap.” The observation (now known as “Sturgeon’s Law” or “Sturgeon’s Revelation”) is justifiably famous; his implicit point applies not just to sci-fi but to other ghettoized genres as well. In the wilderness of the popular arts, without the reassuring guiderails of an august critical establishment, a sci-fi fan (or a horror fan) is like a treasure hunter without a map, forced to navigate the uncharted waters of pulp and schlock in search of the remaining ten percent, the “flecks of gold dropped in the grass” that make it all worthwhile. Two years ago I gathered five examples of the far end of Sturgeon’s statistical bell curve for my so-called “Masterpiece Series”—Psycho (1960), Night of the Living Dead (1968), The Exorcist (1973), Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1978), and Alien (1979)—and now I’m ready to add a sixth.

Like those other movies, Gore Verbinski’s The Ring scales the high altitudes of art without ever losing sight of the basic mechanics of scare fiction; the elements are assembled with incredible skill, intricacy and delicacy (and an unerring sense of tone) but the chills and thrills are as coarse, direct and potent as the simplest campfire story igniting a pre-teen nervous system. The movie reaches effortlessly for the deepest themes and ambiguities of all ghost stories (and The Ring is, first and foremost, a ghost story in the richest sense) without ever abandoning the basic scare mechanics that fuel a horror fan’s nightmares. While you may never penetrate the sensual, criminal and historical mysteries at the movie’s core, you’ll know exactly which innocuous real-life phenomena to be terrified of; which mundane anxieties are being exquisitely re-tuned into instruments of fear.

“Have you heard about the videotape that kills you when you watch it?” Sixty-seven seconds and four lines into the classic dark-and-stormy-night opening (rendered in extreme low light* by ace cinematographer Bojan Bazelli), the story’s brilliant basic conceit is revealed, unleashing exactly that surreal alchemy by which the ordinary world comes apart, exposing avenues to the inexplicable and uncanny. Ghosts are storytellers, in any culture and any century, vengefully testifying, reaching back into the realm of the living with hatred and longing, but in our modern era, wouldn’t the spectral traces of the restless afterlife be recorded not in tea leaves or animal entrails (or in Kirlian images captured by Victorian cameras) but within the television screens, phones and videotapes that surround us? When six doomed, libido-driven teenagers (is there another kind in horror movies?) in a remote mountain cabin with a VCR “try to record the game” and, instead, pick up the emanations that turn an unlabeled VHS cassette into a lethal, confounding dispatch from beyond the grave, the timeless armatures of all ghost stories (from Homer to Shakespeare to Dickens) are transformed into a twenty-first-century fable, in which ethereal clues are literally hidden beyond the tracking edges of a video image.

The “deadly tape” motif is carried over from Hideo Nakata’s Japanese original, Ringu (1998) (which I have not seen), but Verbinski and screenwriter Ehren Kruger have successfully Americanized the story—although murky evidence of a curse from the Far East remains at the core of the new movie’s mystery investigation. The Ring doesn’t feel like a remake at all; the relentless structural perfection (by which layers of the mystery are penetrated at climactic half-hour act breaks) and the unusually subtle cultural and psychological depth lend an orchestral complexity and force to the scares. The ghost story draws powerful connections (metaphorical and real) between two shattered families, past and present, and two troubled children: Naomi Watts and Martin Henderson (as a Seattle journalist and her photographer ex-boyfriend) bring their professional skills to bear in a desperate race to solve the supernatural mystery before it kills them and their moody young son, but the mystery itself is a darker, gothic tale of an island horse farm, a lighthouse, an apparent suicide and a lonely girl trapped in a barn’s attic with only a television for companionship. The Dadaist imagery on the tape—the bugs and ladders, chairs and centipedes, mirrors and severed fingers and, finally, the ring (which you see “before you die” if you’re cursed) connect the broken families in a weave of sadness, estrangement and empathy that informs the video-broadcast metaphor: the suffering of a child is fundamentally solitary, but the effects can be broad beyond belief, and, in the end, as the otherworldly girl promises the baffled scientists who cruelly, fruitlessly examine her, “everyone will suffer.”

Beyond his masterful storytelling gifts, Gore Verbinski is a spectacular visual talent in the tradition of Ridley Scott and David Fincher, and he excels at crafting traditionally evocative visuals by means of meticulously executed photography invisibly bolstered by wall-to-wall digital effects. (Anyone doubting these claims should re-aquaint themselves with his subsequent project, the glorious Pirates of the Caribbean trilogy, which employs an orgy of ILM wizardry to transform a 1950s Disneyland ride into an irresistible, nearly-hallucenogenic adventure saga.) Eight different effects houses worked on The Ring, including Tippett Studios, Matte World Digital (who created Moesko Island and its lighthouse out of thin air, as also documented in this article) and especially Method Studios, who made the Ring Tape itself (see below)—but you can watch the whole movie without ever suspecting that it contains a single pixel; like Hans Zimmer’s haunting score, the digital technology propels the story without polluting our soulful gaze at the lonely, rain-drenched, bottle-green world it inhabits. Filled with countless memorable details—a blinking answering machine light; a panicked stallion galloping across a fog-bound ferryboat, the staccato video still of the ring that exactly intersects the DreamWorks logo’s moon for two frames (see top image above) in lieu of an opening title—this somber, ultimately heroic tale fulfils the highest potentials of horror movies without ever losing sight of its obligations to scare you senseless. If, as Sturgeon implied, only ten percent of horror is any good at all, it’s an even smaller portion that’s truly superb; that affirms our faith in the necessity of the macabre: The Ring unquestionably belongs to that rarefied breed.

(P.S.:The DVD of The Ring contains the complete, uninterrupted Ring Tape as a hidden “Easter Egg,” which I’ve extracted and posted on my website for your viewing unease.)


*I'm not kidding about "extreme low light." Watch the movie's opening sequence again (but only if you've seen it already; don't waste your first viewing of this excellent seven minutes on a mediocre YouTube clip): that's got to be the most dimly-lit suburban home I've ever seen. It's not shadowy or gothic—it's a perfectly ordinary, affluent house equipped with a normal complement of lamps—but it's nevertheless drowning in darkness.

20 comments:

DKC said...

Excellent! This is an amazing movie - I love reading the "Jordan take" as always.

Jordan said...

Thanks! I made it just under the wire...and I think that's it for me, this Horrorthon. I had one more in the pipeline but I can't see myself doing it by midnight.

Jordan said...

I can't stop running on at the mouth about the movie's opening sequence. The filmmaking is so excellent, because the trickery is so subtle: like I wrote above, there are no obvious harsh shadows or uplit gothic details or creaky steps or anything like that. The entire household interior is as innocuous and harmless as any suburban home...except that it's just so unbelievably dark. The mounting, overwhelming fear flows from exactly where you least want it to: an ordinary American bedroom, and a nighttime trip downstairs to the kitchen. Sublime!

JPX said...

The first time I saw the trailer for The Ring I was immediately hooked by the idea of a curse videotape that unleashes its evil upon viewing it. I attended to a showing of The Ring by myself the first weekend it came out and for the first time in, heck, probably forever, I was chilled to the bone watching a horror movie in a movie theater. When the film ended and the credits started to roll I was already on my phone to Octo and JSP insisting that they see the film immediately (I made a similar call to Octo many years earlier after watching A Nightmare on Elm Street). I consider Halloween to be my favorite horror film of all time for reasons endlessly discussed on Horrorthon, but The Ring would absolutely be number 2 on my list. No other film evokes such endless dread. Jordan, your review perfectly captures why this film “works” in a way that I would never have been able to describe. I love when you state,

“The Ring is, first and foremost, a ghost story in the richest sense) without ever abandoning the basic scare mechanics that fuel a horror fan’s nightmares. While you may never penetrate the sensual, criminal and historical mysteries at the movie’s core, you’ll know exactly which innocuous real-life phenomena to be terrified of; which mundane anxieties are being exquisitely re-tuned into instruments of fear.”

Perfect. We have reviewed many, many horror films on Horrorthon (1, 1997 to be exact) and one thing that has always struck me is how difficult it must be to make a ghost film. Ghost stories are my favorite of the horror genre but very few are effective. As you note so eloquently, The Ring distills the “ghost” story to its most basic elements, which is why it’s so damn effective. Do yourself a favor; don’t ever watch The Ring Two. I would recommend the short film “Rings”, which was an extra on The Ring DVD and concludes at the beginning of Ring Two, but avoid the rest, it’s beyond awful.

The videotape, shudder!!! The shot of Anna Morgan looking at you while she brushes her hair is the single moment that made me terrified of The Ring.

I never appreciated that there was so much CG work in the film, thanks for the education. Jordan, I believe all of your reviews should be grouped together and be made required reading for college students. Awesome.

JPX said...

I also like the opening sequence, which plays much more like a conventional horror film, never hinting at the horribleness to come unless you frame by frame Katie’s death and see her face melt.

Jordan said...

So glad you guys agree with me. This movie really is something special; I'm so glad I finally got the review up, just a few hours before the deadline.

I never appreciated that there was so much CG work in the film.

Right, because it's good CGI! This brings up one of my constant frustrations: people who bitch about CGI (on the internet, in movie reviews and in person) saying, "At this point we all know what CGI looks like" and "I'm so sick of CGI" and "I just hate the look of CGI; give me traditional effects every time!"

As Octopunk would say, No you fucking don't. If you gave audiences a little button to push when they "knew" they were looking at CGI and then looked at the test results graphs after monitoring nine or ten movies, the audience (especially all those "shrewd" "I hate CGI" people) would score a D- or an F.

There's a famous story about the making of Titanic (which doesn't even have such great effects by today's standards) in which the team who was putting the digital people onto the boat deck for those big "helicopter" flyby shots of the Titanic showed their work to other crewmembers. "There are a hundred people on the deck of the ship," the effects guys explained: "We want you to pick out all the ones who are CGI." Everyone jumped into the task, all sure of themselves: "The guy on the poop deck is fake. The guys over here are fake..but the rest are real." Everyone arguing, etc. Finally they were done and the effects guys smugly announced that all the people in the shot were CGI. (And these were fucking Cameron's crew being fooled!)

If you haven't done so already, take a look at the page on Matte World Digital's website explaining their minute-long aerial shot from The Ring showing Rachel's approach to the Morgan Horse Farm, including the 100% fake lighthouse. (Every time you see the lighthouse in the movie, you're looking at a CGI model.)

I just watched Changeling a (great) movie set in 1920s Los Angeles. I was looking really hard at all the shots, trying to see how it was done, and I still missed most of the CGI. I was only looking for buildings, skies etc. but it turns out they used the "MASSIVE" software that Peter Jackson pioneered in the Rings movies to generate orc armies etc. and that Eastwood's period Los Angeles streets are filled with dozens of CGI crowds and pedestrians walking around all over the place. I never would have guessed. Anyway I love CGI and I'm sick of the h8erz.

Jordan said...

Coincidentally, my buddy Brendan just called as I was finishing that last comment, mentioning that he's most of the way through Dead Man's Chest, and we spent a couple minutes marveling at the sick CGI throughout the Pirates trilogy (including Bill Nighy as "Davy Jones," who's got what ILM called "the best digital eyes ever done.")

JPX said...

1, 997 is the number of movies reviewed on Horrorthon. I only wish it were 1, 1997.

Jordan said...

My favorite moment in the Ring Tape is when Anna is in the mirror, and then the mirror shifts over to show a reflection of Samara receding into the shadows. It's the first time you see Samara, and it's notable because Rachel and the others miss the point; they're still focused on Anna's story and haven't yet realized that it's the daughter who's important. Every time I watch the movie and get to that moment in the tape, I get a chill. "You're missing it!" I want to yell at Rachel.

JPX said...

Yes! I love that moment too!!! Up until that moment you sympathize for Sumara.

The entire tape is just ridiculously creepy, especially the chilling soundtrack. I love the muted sound that's made when the well cover seals the well. My great-grandmother had a well like that on her property (a farm) and I remember thinking it was creepy when I was a kid.

Jordan said...

JPX, did you watch the version from the DVD, which I posted here? They trimmed it a bit for the movie; there's some stuff that's only in this long version (even taking into account the cuts to Rachel's reaction shots).

The Ring Tape is so well done, I even admire the timing of those two quick bursts of static that start it off. If you check out the altered DreamWorks logo (with The Ring intersecting the moon in two frames like I said), you'll also see those two bursts of static with exactly the same timing. Again, rather than putting any opening titles, they just use the Ring Tape overlays. And they mute out the DreamWorks logo music, replacing it with the soft sound of the rain. "It was a dark and stormy night." Yeah!

Jordan said...

BTW I did watch The Ring Two; it's a total disaster. It helps bolster my "pro-remake" stance: when you get rid of Gore Verbinski and replace him by going and getting the director of the original, he has no idea what to do. It's awful. (But, yes, Rings is pretty cool, if unnecessary.)

JPX said...

I will have to go back and do a tape comparison. I believe I've seen the longer version because I picked up the DVD as soon as it came out. You should check out the tape from Ringu, far less impressive.

Octopunk said...

Wow. Excellent review, Jordan. You teased about reviewing this last year so I've kind of been waiting that whole time, and you still delivered.

I really like the paragraph that starts "'Have you heard about the videotape that kills you when you watch it?'" The Ring is so damn potent I find it difficult to pin down the true nature of its menace, but you do it gracefully. I particularly liked "...that surreal alchemy by which the ordinary world comes apart, exposing avenues to the inexplicable and uncanny," and also the following sentence: "Ghosts are storytellers, in any culture and any century, vengefully testifying, reaching back into the realm of the living with hatred and longing..."

I'm reminded of my own attempts to convey the same thing when I reviewed this in 2004 (if you'll forgive the self-indulgence):"The only signals that are dangerous are the ones whose point of origin is wherever the hell Samara came from. And where is that exactly? Is it the realm of the dead? Is it Hell? Whatever it is, it's beyond horrible and it's real." The flick leaves you reaching out in the dark, and I mean that in the best way.

I can't fathom the precise equation that led to the American remake, which while being far, far superior to the original (in my opinion), still operates from the same inspired story armature. It's not surprising they keep trying to recreate the experiment with Asian imports.

Octopunk said...

The Ringu tape sucks! It's like ten seconds long! Total gyp to get killed by that thing. A bad case of the flu would be more appropriate.

Johnny Sweatpants said...

Jordan that review was outstanding, even by your standards!

Blech, Ring 2. *spits* "Abomination" hardly covers what that movie was.

Jordan said...

Hey, JPX: another excellent digital effect in The Ring is that doomed horse. It's a real horse when Rachel's interacting with it ("Hey, you!") but once it breaks free, it's pure CGI. No animals were harmed.

Jordan said...

P.S. Thanks, guys. Glad you liked the review. It was a pleasure to write; it helped me sharpen my thinking about this excellent flick.

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