The Ring was not that scary for me, even the first time I watched it. That doesn't mean it wasn't a great horror film, or (as I learned in this viewing) that it isn't terrifying for others.) It uses a journalist heroine protagonist (Naomi Watts) to discover the ghosts story. It acts very much like a documentary in this regard. I've been writing and thinking a lot about what documentary is. I'm under the assumption that documentary is a way of uncovering truth, a way of exposing by gathering documents-- by interviews, video footage, written documents, and images--and presenting them to someone is a fashion that is narrative-like, though it doesn't follow actors and characters as a ficticious narrative film. A documentary tells a story of a person, or an incident, but it is not a narrative film at all like the Ring obviously is.
Obviously the reason it reminds me of documentary is because of its tendency to use actual documents or evidence that is gathered by our heroine to uncover the bits and pieces of information that is known about the "actual" main character--as I'd identify her--the ghost Samara Morgan. The narrative does not identify Samara as a ghost per se, but I'm going to call her that because it is the way she functions, and it is how she is identified in the original Japanese title--for which this title is based--
Ringu. The uncovering, the expository nature that
The Ring has going for the ghost Samara is precisely what is scary about this film. There is very little known about Samara, it begins with the very vague and yet strangely beautiful video tape that ensures your death seven days after viewing it. (Following a viewing of the video is a phone call with presumably a child's voice that says "seven days" in a creepy whisper.) Because the film starts off with very little information about Samara, the ghost, it pretends to be about this video tape that promises death, mainly because several people have died seven days after viewing it. Later, with the discoveries that Rachel (Watts) has made, the horror must lie not with the time of death based on the video tape, but the ghostly aspect of Samara as she is being understood, and her unexplained way of communicating with Rachel's son.
This ghost is someone who needs to be discovered, she wants to be known and the deadly video-tape is what actually is her expository medium however vague it may be. Before her death, her nature was masochistic and she was seen as deranged in need of help from mental facilities. The video is actually very beautiful as a short film in terms of the images that are chosen. Some are not horrifying but simple and poignant. Their montage-like characteristics attempt to speak a message using the images as signifiers. The images do not make sense on their own though, nor does the video make sense as a whole. As a video, it speaks of suicide and death, which is all it is trying to do.
