I was kind of take it or leave it about this movie the first time i saw it. its very slow, atmospheric, and sort of just felt like Naomi Watts wandering around for a while. no i have the OG movie to compare it with, so lets see if its better or worse than i remembered it.
It sounds like just another urban legend -- a videotape filled with nightmarish images leads to a phone call foretelling the viewer's death in exactly seven days. Newspaper reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) is skeptical of the story until four teenagers all die mysteriously exactly one week after watching just such a tape. Allowing her investigative curiosity to get the better of her, Rachel tracks down the video and watches it. Now she has just seven days to unravel the mystery.
the way this movie opens is SCREAM levels of iconic. At a suburban home in Seattle, Washington, two friends discuss their town’s resident legend of a cursed videotape in Katie's room, which kills the viewer after seven days. Katie claims she watched the tape a week ago with her boyfriend, but this is just the first of a few good fake outs. Minutes later, she dies a wonderfully vague death off screen. and once this admirably awesome opening wraps up, welcome to dreary ass rainy Seattle.
once upon a time, i lived right beside Seattle on Vancouver island. Anyone who has ever been there knows its reputation for rain filled winters, and for some people the months of rain is rather dismal. i always enjoyed the rain in every sensory way possible, and never in my two year of island living did i see anything as dismal as this movie. This whole movie feels like being stuck under antique hospital lights. like a deflated balloon, the dismal smell of a life long smokers car, need i go on? I'm all down for dismal ass hopeless feeling movies when they are done right, but wouldn't it be even scarier if all this was happening in broad daylight? the color pallet has always felt totally unnecessary, and gives the whole movie the feeling of a long and exhausted sigh.
another thing that bother me about this movie is the acting. Naomi Watts is of course an amazing actor, but this movie really feels like she is giving the bare minimum. Her so played by David Dorfman (or an alien) is the strangest looking person i have ever seen. everyone in this movie feels like they just snarfed a few pounds of Quaalude's before every scene. he is just a weird ass kid yall, and his inclusion at all is only to keep to the original story as closely as possible. why not try and do something even slightly different?
For the life of me, i just cant enjoy this movie. mad respect for its influence over the genre, but as a movie this is a snooze fest
zzzzzzz/10
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