RING, THE

-By Daniel Eagan

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Originally filmed in 1998, The Ring has become a horror franchise in Japan, spawning two legitimate sequels as well as several knockoffs. Although elitists will complain that the American version is inferior, DreamWorks' The Ring is a thoughtful, persuasive, and at times deeply frightening film that should find an appreciative audience. The remake proves once again that a good script and direction can produce real scares without leaning on gore and violence.

The opening could be a scene from the next Scream installment. A rainy night in a typical suburban house. Long, dark hallways leading to closed doors. Two high-school girls discuss an 'urban myth' about a videotape that kills you if you watch it. As the soundtrack throbs and the camera creeps along at floor-level, The Ring starts to feel like any polished but generic scary movie.

But the film takes a turn into unexpected territory when journalist and single mother Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) learns about the tape. While investigating the death of her niece, Rachel comes across a copy, and watches it. Skeptical about its powers at first, she becomes more concerned after several inexplicable incidents.

Rachel's investigation into the story behind the video drives most of the film. Like her, the audience gradually learns more about the images on the tape. There is a plague of suicidal horses on Moesko Island, and peculiar experiments at a nearby psychiatric hospital. A doctor (Jane Alexander) is carefully enigmatic about the disappearance of a young girl named Samara (Daveigh Chase). Giving urgency to Rachel's efforts is the fact that her young son Aidan (David Dorfman) and former boyfriend Noah (Martin Henderson) have seen the tape. Clues pile up, some contradictory, some impenetrable. With time running out, Rachel faces desperate decisions about a terrible fate.

Apart from some sly humor (like the occasional video glitch that intrudes into the film), The Ring is thankfully free of the camp and irony that has infected the horror genre recently. Instead, the filmmakers approach the material seriously, even when the plot forces the characters into some pretty worn-out clichs. The overwhelming sense of dread is unnerving, and the film's feverish, hallucinatory imagery can be breathtaking, notably when a racehorse runs amok on a ferryboat.

The understated production design, with its icy blue interiors and perpetually overcast skies, adds to the menace. The acting is similarly restrained, with an impressive performance from young Dorfman and a quietly effective bit by Alexander. True to the horror tradition, The Ring ends with a plot twist that is one of the best examples of misdirection in recent memory. Accomplished and genuinely scary, The Ring should delight horror fans.

-Daniel Eagan