The Ring - Movie Review Example

Keller watches the tape in order to find out the mystery behind it and concludes that the videotape has some connection to a little girl called Samara. Keller tries her best to piece together the puzzle of the mysterious tape before the seven days when she would die. It is at this juncture that the drama begins as she embarks on a race against time, where she has to unravel the knotted threads of the secret of the video if she has to save herself. The movie scares not with the regular arsenal of blood and gore, but by instilling in the viewer the fear of the unknown that runs down your spine because of the inability and sheer helplessness of the individuals who become the targets of the mysterious Samara in the videotape, who is on a rampage seeking revenge.

The entire movie swings like a pendulum back and forth between modernism and post- modernism views. Meta narratives are the rules that determined "the legitimacy of particular forms of narrative" and this helps us to determine their legitimacy and truth for the different forms of narrative employed. (Malpas, Postmodern) In the context of the movie, 'The Ring," the opening scene itself sets the mood for a post-modern, meta narrative method of telling the story. On the other hand, the modernist view of a grand narrative could be seen in the scene when Rachael falls into the well.

In speaking of the grand narrative Malpas states, "A grand narrative tells the story of theprogress and development of narrative. ., grand narratives legitimate their content inrelation to an overarching theme or idea."Some of the key words in this quotation are "progress and development". According to the Merriam - Webster dictionary, the word "progress" is defined as "a gradual betterment, how we gauge our lives when we move forward, for example when we make technological advancement to better our lives" and the word "development" means to go through a natural process of growth, differentiation, or evolution.

" While the narrative is many short stories contained in a collection, and used to weave the incidents and experiences of the past while trying to make progress in the future, the grand narrative has all these small stories linked together in a single novel from the beginning to the end.The conversation between the two girls about the tape reveals that the narrative, or in this case, the urban legend is true. The videotape has a semiabstract quality about itself, and there is hardly anything that can testify to its evil intentions.

But the legitimacy of the tape is established due to the fear inherent in the girls. The truth of the event, which during its retelling by the girl in question, seems rather far - fetched becomes verifiable when she dies under the most suspicious circumstances. As Malpas puts it, "A metanarrative thus sets out the axioms that allow communication to take place, and determines the legitimacy of a narrative for a particular genre, as well as giving the rules to determine its truth or falsity." The following is a good example of this.

What starts as a gossipy chat between two teenagers has become a legitimate narration, the veracity of which is established beyond