When teenage Katie, Amber Tamblyn, dies suddenly, her journalist aunt, Rachel Keller, Naomi Watts, a single mother, investigates. Katie and three friends had been staying in a mountain cabin where they watched a mysterious, surreal video; when it finished, an anonymous phone call warned them they only had a week to live - and all four have died. Rachel goes to the cabin and sees the video herself - and the phone rings with the ominous warning. Seeking help from her ex-lover Noah, Martin Henderson, Rachel finds the trail leads in mysterious directions and she becomes more and more aware that she, and Aidan, David Dorfman, her son, who also saw the video, may be doomed.
This is a Hollywood remake of the Japanese thriller, Ringu of 1998 which was such a hit it spawned a sequel AND a prequel. The original has been skillfully adapted by writer Ehren Kruger and directed by Gore Verbinski - Gore seems an appropriate name for a director of a horror film. And there's quite a bit of creepy horror in The Ring even if the plot is basically rather a silly one. Naomi Watts, in her first starring role in a studio picture, is excellent as the tenacious but understandably frightened woman at the centre of this supernatural mystery.
