The Ring (2002)

DIRECTOR: Gore Verbinski

CAST: Naomi Watts, Martin Henderson, Brian Cox, Amber Tamblyn

HAVE I SEEN IT BEFORE: Never.

DID I LIKE IT: It is an odd experience to take in a horror movie not in anticipation of some future podcast discussion, but this one has been a bit of a blind spot on my radar for a number of years.

The images are certainly evocative, I’ll give it that. And there’s a weird undercurrent of nostalgia to see a movie about a print journalist (Watts) fixated on a VHS tape. When she makes use of a payphone in at least one scene, it’s almost like watching a period piece.

But there’s one problem that may have as many as three explanations.

Those image might just be a bit too iconic. I’ve seen that little girl crawl her way out of that well so many times, there’s just no hope of surprise when I finally took it all in with context. I can imagine The Blair Witch Project (1999) will elicit similar response to the uninitiated, but this film doesn’t have anything resembling that earlier film’s unrelentingly unnerving last few minutes.

There may be just a bit too much bleakness in the film for the proceedings to ever really ramp up to genuine terror. Ari Aster has the same problem for me, although in his case it’s virtually impossible that misery porn buffet is not the filmmaker’s absolute intention.

On the other hand, my horror callus might be too rough for anything to ever properly hit a vein. It’s a reality that has to be confronted at some point. But then again there is the hope that the next film around the corner will manage to surprise. Unfortunately, this isn’t that film.

The whys are probably incidental. What we have here is a perfectly competently made film that failed to leave any kind of resonance, or draw out any kind of reflexive response from.

X (2022)

Director: Ti West

Cast: Mia Goth, Jenna Ortega, Martin Henderson, Brittany Snow

Have I Seen it Before: Never.

Did I Like It: I can’t say that I found the first two-thirds of the film—you know, the part that would have functioned perfectly well as any of a number of softcore porno films airing on premium cable in the 90s—more than mostly boring. I usually find prolonged depictions of sex pretty boring, and it isn’t even remotely like the film has anything even remotely as fresh to say about pornographers as Boogie Nights (1997), or even anything as introspective about strippers as Showgirls (1995). The only even remotely profound things it has to say about sex are focused on the insistent grossness of its villains, which lends the film an ugly quality beyond its violence.

If that was all the film had to offer, then it would have been a pretty depressing experience, especially considering that the film comes pre-packaged as a franchise which could run for years, with an entire prequel imminent, Pearl, which had been shot concurrently with this film and another sequel on the drawing board.

So, how did the film win me over? First, the entire movie—for all of its flaws in tone—feels thoroughly as if it was produced in the time in which it takes place, the late 1970s. There’s never one moment when I could see the 2020s leaking through the film, and that is an impressive enough trick in its own right. When the film really gets going, it very nearly feels as if it was a long-lost slasher movie of the era, only turned up recently.

Which brings me to the film’s ending. Slasher absurdism abounds and ugliness in a number of forms pervades. This alone would limit the film to reaching only for the mediocre, especially when it is abundantly clear that it is slavishly devoted to being an homage of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974). But that the film could tag the proceedings with a joke that proceeds somewhat logically from what preceded it, turns the entire thing into a comedic Rube Goldberg machine, and it’s hard not to like that.