Almost.
When this movie released in 2002 it was supposed to be the scariest movie ever made up until then. Ten years later however, it's not quite Insidious. Or Amittyville for that matter. Once again, this is a great movie, but it's not as scary as it could've been. So here's the synopsis.
Rachel is a journalist whose 16 year old niece just dropped dead for no apparent reason at all. Sixteen year olds' hearts don't just stop. Rachel knows this and, being a journalist, she begins to ask around. She talks to some of Katie's, her niece, friends who say she died because she watched a video. A video that kills you exactly seven days after you watch it. As she digs she find that Katie and three other friends watched the video and that they all died at the same time. Four kids, all watch the same video, and all die at the same time one week later. Well that's enough to get any journalist going. She sets off to discover just what's going on.
Rachel starts by going to the cabin that Katie and her friends stayed at. After talking to the owner, she find a tape she assumes contains the video. She rents the very same cabin as Katie and her friends and takes the tape and watches it. The tape is just a bunch of images that make no sense whatsoever. She asks a friend of hers, Noah, to help her analyze the tape. So together they set off on this quest to discover where the tape came from and why it kills people. She makes a copy of the tape so Noah can analyze some more, but then gets mad at him because of some other girl and takes it with her.
While working with Noah, they discover something on the tape so she takes it to work with her where she can analyze it herself. By this point she is convinced that she is going to die by day seven so she reaches out to Noah to help her again. She figures out where the tape comes from and that unlocks everything she needs to know. She finds out who the person is in the video. She figures out what happened to her and finds the house the woman lived in. Sometime during her investigation she walks into the living room and finds her son, Aidan, watching the tape. Her investigation becomes desperate now. She has to figure out what's killing everyone that watches the tape and stop it from killing her and her son. Her and Noah split up. She travels to the estate of the woman in the video, Anna Morgan. The Morgans used to breed horses, but something happened to their horses. They all went crazy and threw themselves into the ocean. No one knew why but it turns out the Morgans did. Anna Morgan was unable to have children, so her and her husband, Richard, adopted a little girl and named her Samara. According to everyone on the island, things started getting bad on the island when Samara showed up. Then Samara disappeared and things got better.
Rachel explores the Morgans house some more and Richard catches her. He hits her with a TV and walks upstairs where he electrocutes himself in front of Rachel. Noah comes rushing in and consoles her and they set off to the barn to check it out. They find a loft where the Morgans used to keep Samara. There they find a tree burned into the wall and Rachel recognizes it. It's from the cabin she started her investigation at. They travel back to the cabin to look for anything else they can find.
It's now day seven for Rachel. If she doesn't figure it out by sunset she's dead. I don't feel like ruining the ending for you because it is all really good and the way everything finally ties together is kind of clever. So the only thing I'll give away is that Rachel saves herself and Aidan, but at the cost of someone else.
So how do I rate this movie? It was a good horror movie. There were virtually no cliched horror movie shots or lines. There was no overuse of blood and gore. It was very well done, but it still wasn't as scary as it could've been. I wanted this movie to make me feel like I only had seven days to live. Of course I took the precaution necessary to survive, but I can't give that away. So, my rating?
