You Have Just 7 Days To Live...
 Jul 1st, 2009
Advantages:
Lots of scares
Disadvantages:
A slow burner
Recommendable:
Yes
Detailed rating:
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Story
Characters / Performances
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  Great_reviewer07
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Member since:10.01.2009
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Review rated by 19 Ciao members on average: very helpful 
After a mysterious video tapes has been circulating around town people begin to drop dead with no reason. One of the victims is reporter, Rachel Keller’s niece Katie, at the funeral, Rachel (Naomi Watts) begins to find out more about this strange tape from some of Katie’s friends, Katie’s boyfriend Josh watched the tape with her and he died at the exact same time that Katie did, supposedly killing himself. Rachel becomes increasingly curious and thinks that a big story may be brewing for her which will be great for her career, she starts to dig deeper into the tape but not before watching it. After watching the tape Rachel receives a phone call immediately after informing her that she has only 7 days to live. If that wasn’t bad enough, Rachel’s deeply disturbed son Aidan and ex-boyfriend Noah also end up watching the tape. Rachel has 7 days to save her, her sons and Noah’s lives but with time not on her side she needs to quickly figure out the origin of the tape and why someone or something wants to kill them…
I think I first watched this film at a friends house when I was about 14 or 15 and it had a big impact on me then, I remember thinking it was great and having really fond memories of it. However when watching it recently I simply couldn’t understand what all the fuss was about back then. This film is a real slow burner and
with a running time of 115 minutes it makes this a film for only the patient people among us. Despite however being a bit slow, The Ring does entail enough spine-tingling moments to keep you watching right until the end, to say it keeps you hooked would be an overstatement as sadly it’s just too slow to keep you completely enthralled with it but the story is just about good enough to make you want to see it through to the end.
What struck me about this film was how clichéd it is all the way through, the settings are constantly gloomy throughout the entire film which of course is textbook horror however I think it just tries to hard to create an eerie atmosphere that the word ‘overkill’ could be used here. It’s constantly raining in the film and even during the day time it always seems very murky and dismal. In spite of this it does manage to create a good atmosphere and leads to a lot of tension during the film. So far in the 00’s there have been several Japanese horror remakes, The Ring being one of the first and still one of the best, others include The Grudge and The Eye, both of which were real let downs so even though The Ring isn’t going to go down in history as a classic horror it still proves that horror remakes can be done well both with critics and the viewing public. Having never seen the Japenese version of this film I can’t comment on which I found to be better however I have read many times that the original far surpasses the American version.
Although I didn’t find this particularly thrilling to watch there are some genuinely scary moments which will keep you on the edge of your seat, this is partly down to the camera work which I found to be very original, ironically. The way that the death shots only lasted about a second it barely gave you enough time to see the victim, this keeps you on your toes as it makes you watch the film more intently just incase any other quick pan shots are to come. What I really like about this film is that it’s different to other horrors, it doesn’t rely on gore to get across scares to people, it uses psychological horror more than anything which is the horror genre that I particularly enjoy. The film also doesn’t have a high body count, infact in total only about 5 people maximum die and from those five you only actually see two of the victims after they’ve been killed so it’s definitely a new and diverse way of scaring people. What I like about this film is how it spaces out Rachel’s 7 days into segments and it documents which day she’s on e.g. ‘Wednesday, day 7’ this helps to keep the audiences attention as with each day she’s getting nearer to her impending death. I like that the days don’t last too long, the investigating never drags on for too long which aids to keep you interested however for some reason I still managed to find this slow. I think maybe it’s just down to the long running time, I think if the film was maybe condensed to around 90 minutes it would have felt a lot more crisp.
The beginning of the film really gets your interest levels up and makes you sit up and take notice of what’s going to happen. The opening sequence is almost reminiscent of Scream in that you are introduced to character who you know for certain are going to die, in this case on girl dies and the other ends up in a mental home. Surprise surprise it’s two girls that start the film off and it’s also no surprise that a woman is playing the main character, for once I’d like to see a horror film break away from tradition and cast a male in the lead role. I really liked Naomi Watts in this film, her character managed to be likeable even though she’s a reporter who barely has time for her young son. You can tell that she adores her son and this definitely comes across well on screen. She also manages to pull off an American accent well what with being an Australian, her ex boyfriend played by Martin Henderson is from New Zealand so it’s nice to know that these two were cast because of their acting potential and not because of their typical American look.
David Dorfman, who plays Rachel’s son Aidan is someone that I didn’t manage to peg. As cute as he is his character comes across as very cold, even referring to his Mum as Rachel. He plays the usual ‘Damien like’ disturbed, psychic child who begins drawing pictures depicting his Cousin, Katie’s death before it happens. There are some very surreal moments in the film, all of which should be taken with a pinch of salt. One scene in particular involving a demented horse on a boat, became very tense viewing.
I was quite disappointed with the ending, the last 10 minutes really heat up only to fizzle out at the last second, the ending was left open which of course leads onto The Ring Two which was released in 2005. I’d recommend this to people who are tired of the usual textbook horror films and want something a bit different, The Ring has a very unique story to it and has some genuinely unnerving moments which will keep you watching until the very end.
The DVD is available from play.com for the extortionate price of £14.99, I suggest looking out for this on TV as it’s regularly shown. The special features include:
Short film created by director Gore Verbinski exclusively for this release (15 mins)
Trailer
Interactive menu
Scene access
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03.10.2009 20:36
Fab review, well written and informative :)
03.07.2009 23:17
I thought this was so overrated when I first saw it and still think it's one of the most boring 'horro' movies I've seen, on par with Blair Witch
02.07.2009 20:28
Nice review. I thought the film was ok. I prefer 'the Grudge', lol x L@cey