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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.