Metascore

Mixed or average reviews - based on 36 Critics What's this?

User Score

Generally favorable reviews- based on 149 Ratings

  • Starring: Brian Cox, Martin Henderson, Naomi Watts
  • Summary: In this remake of one of Japan's biggest box office hits, Naomi Watts plays a journalist who discovers a mysterious videotape that is connected to several deaths.
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 19 out of 36
  2. Negative: 4 out of 36
  1. Reviewed by: C.W. Nevius
    100
    So good it's scary.
  2. Reviewed by: Jim Agnew
    80
    Dark, disturbing and original throughout. You know that you’re going to see something a little different than your usual studio crap.
  3. 60
    In the final reel, the tension dissipates with a flabby hiss, as the film devolves into a banal, conventional ghost story.
  4. I hated it, but I grant that it does tap into a vein of technological horror - the fear of the VCR! - that will have young videophiles chatting it up for weeks

See all 36 Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 65 out of 89
  2. Negative: 14 out of 89
  1. Jivko
    10
    Excellent movie.
  2. This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. A great thriller with a great plot, and several scenes with alarms and can best be left to the final scene where Samara is finally seen coming out of television to make just another victim in his gaze. The film manages to leave you "stuck" until the final minutes and then you wonder what will happen. Expand
  3. Gore Verbinski made a highly thrilling movie, although there are almost none of the usual shock effects. It's no masterpiece and sometimes there stay gaps in the plot, but all in all, this is is a great psycho thriller with two really good child actors. Expand
  4. Oh my. I still don't understand why this fascinates people so. I bought this as a special edition DVD after hearing so much about it. And, well. It doesn't really scare. It's got some interesting plot pieces, and it's fine to watch... but it's really an overproduced, over-hyped, and rather awful horror movie. The Village will give more shock value, and the 'psychological horror' is simply not there. You won't have nightmares. You'll barely bat an eyelid. Most of the film is spent expecting something interesting to happen. It does. Maybe twice. Worth a cheap buy, or a late night boredom-killer. Expand

See all 89 User Reviews

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