Seven days
Last night, for reasons I still don't understand, my husband and I decided to watch the movie "The Ring." I think it was sparked by a conversation we'd had with some friends Sunday night about the scariest moments in movies. Mine, just as an aside, occurs in "The Exorcist" when the girl sees a flash of the demon who is possessing her. It's one of those "blink and you miss it" moments. But if you have a VCR/DVD and pause it, you can see the horrifying face that comes on screen. It wouldn't be scary if it wasn't completely unexpected. But up to that point in the movie there hasn't been anything hugely scary like that, so you let your guard down.

Anyway, our friends told us that "The Ring" was scary, and lord knows why, but we decided to see if they were right.

I'd have to say that it was definitely creepy. But it was one of those movies that you know exactly when something freaky is going to happen, because they change the music, or they build the tension until you know something is coming.

And they can't let the viewer make his or her own assumptions. For instance, early on in the film, we see the disturbing home video that apparently is responsible for four teens' deaths. People who view the movie die in seven days. The video contains strange, juxtaposed images, for instance, a woman looking in a mirror, dead horses, a window where someone is looking out, a lighthouse scene, a ladder. A few minutes later, our protagonist, who has seen the video and is now under this seven day curse, walks past a ladder propped up at an identical angle to the one in the video. Any idiot could have made the connection, but instead, they have to cut back to the scene in the video of the ladder. Like, LOOK! THERE IS A CONNECTION HERE! DO YOU SEE? HUH? HUH?

I know that when viewing a movie such as "The Ring," one is not supposed to ponder the logic after the film is over. It's actually an interesting premise, and I think they could have done a lot more with it than they did. For instance, I want to know more about the Morgans, the family around which the curse seems to have originated. I think that a few more people should have mysteriously died.

Nothing spectacular, but after it was over, it stayed with me in a "sleep with the lights on" kind of way.