Ring

Problem is the other watched the tape, six days 23 hours ago… and counting. Something happens. One of the teens is literally scared to death and the other driven hopelessly insane.

At the dead girl's funeral Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts), a young reporter whose son Aidan used to be babysat byher, senses a story. Investigating, she quickly discovers that three other teenagers died the same night at exactly the same time. All had watched the same video in a cabin in the woods…

Going to the cabin, Rachel finds the tape and watches it. Horses lie on a beach, dead and dying. A woman is reflected in a mirror, the image jumping to reveal a second, shadowy figure. A ring of light dies, leaving only a corona… Then the phone rings…

Unsure of what to make of it all, Rachel takes the tape to her former partner, Noah (Martin Henderson), who is also Aidan's father. An electronics expert, he watches the killer tape. (Thanks for nothing, bitca.) Though deducing that something is wrong with the signal on the tape, he is sceptical about the killer video idea.

But when Aidan accidentally watches the video – a move uncomfortably reminiscent of the 'do you know what your children are watching' type campaigns around video nasties, especially given Rachel's single parent, working mother status – Noah joins Rachel in a desperate quest to unravel the mystery of the ring before it is too late…

In helming this Hollwood remake of the critically and commercially successful Japanese horror franchise, director Gore Verbinski clearly faced a dilemma: Do I follow the Gus Van Sant Psycho route and do a shot-for-shot remake, risking accusations of unoriginality and playing too safe, or do I do it my way, risking trying to fix what wasn't broken?

In the event, he opts for a bit of both. The earlier scenes tend to follow the original closely. They also work better than those scenes later on where Verbinski strikes off on his own. A set piece involving a distressed horse – it can sense the presence of death – is both original and well-handled, but the succession of climaxes that follow are rather less assured, as the director awkwardly attempts to integrate elements from Ring 2 and Ring 0 and tellingly leaves the way open for a sequel.

Elsewhere, one also gets the feeling that the director was going for a somewhat Lynchian feel. Maybe it's the "student film", as Aidan dismissively describes the surrealistic collage of seemingly random images that makes up the tape, whose relatively polished feel, compared to the graininess of those on the Japanese original, renders them less effective. Or perhaps it's the Twin Peaks style cabin in the woods, complete with an eccentric manager who simply comes across as, alas, incongruous and gratuituous.

The Lynch connection extends further, thanks to the presence of Naomi Watts from Mulholland Drive and, as one of the hapless teens, Amber Tamblyn, daughter of Russ Tamblyn who played Dr Jacoby in Twin Peaks. It's a small world when you've got family…

As the estranged parents Watts and Henderson do well enough. Not great, award-winning performances by any means, but enough to make you care about their characters and predicament. Their son, as played by David Dorfman, is, however, another matter entirely. He's just too damn creepy. It would be okay if he were the monster but as the supposed innocent who has to be saved it just don't work…

Brian Cox and Jane Alexander are reliable in supporting roles late on, though neither is really tested by the material.

All told, Ring is an effective Hollywood remake that will no doubt succeed with an audience of unadventurous filmgoers who are afraid to watch subtitled films. But for those who have seen Hideo Nakata's original, it's a case of move along, nothing to see here…