A video of Jim Davidson Live At The London Palladium will sap the will to live of even the most undemanding viewer.
But a video cassette apparently doing the rounds with the local Seattle youth has even more catastrophic effects - it saps life itself.
According to urban legend, the tape in question ends with a phone call and the whispered message - "seven days..." A week later you've popped it.
Investigative reporter and mother-of-one Rachel Keller (Watts) hears about the deadly video while attending the wake of her 16-year-old niece.
Tracing the girl's last movements, Rachel winds up at a chalet complex in the mountains where she gets hold of the killer VHS.
Sure enough, once she's watched it - a blurred black and white kaleidoscope of disturbing images - the phone goes...
and guess what?
Enlisting the help of ex-boyfriend Noah (Henderson), she starts picking away at the background to the mysterious tape... but her fate is on fast-forward.
Hideo Nakata's version was an under-powered but chillingly spare psycho-horror yarn, while director Verbinski (Mouse Hunt) fills out detail only hinted at in the orginal.
As a result, the more incidents that are added to the mix, the more it teeters over the brink from menace into melodrama.
That said, it still packs a psychological punch, featuring competent performances and employing muted tones to carefully build-up the atmosphere.
Light years ahead of the half-cocked horror coming out of Hollywood, the mounting dread provides the requisite amount of chair-jolting shocks.
It's also an eerily persuasive argument for trading up from a video recorder to a DVD.
Tim Evans
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