Went to see this on a lark, as I had time to kill and the theatre showing it is walking distance from the apartment. Plus, I'd heard lots of good things about it (and the guys at Penny Arcade seemed to like it). And hey, I've had a soft-spot for Naomi Watts since she was in Tankgirl.

The premise comes from an urban legend. I think. Or the urban legend was started by people who read the original Japanese story. Something like that. Anyway. The movie opens with these two high school girls having a sleep-over, and one is telling the other about "the tape". "The tape", in this case, is a mysterious video tape that, when watched, causes the death of the viewer exactly seven days later. One of the girls has seen it, and is starting to take the threat seriously as the 7-day mark is mere minutes away. Well, as has already been told in previews and other reviews, she dies. And at the exact same time, the other 3 teens who watched it with her also die.

This draws in the attention of the girl's aunt (Watts), a reported for a Seattle-area newspaper. Her sister (the victim's mother) asks her to try and find out what happened. She traces the tape back to a remote vacation cabin, and and watches it herself. When it finishes, the phone rings and a little girl's voice says, "seven days". At first, she doesn't believe it, and is looking for some other cause. But then things start to happen, her ex-boyfriend sees it and starts to have things happen, and then her small son sees it, making solving the mystery much more important.

The movie is very well-paced, and relies on suspense over shock to deliver the frights. Things twist where you expect them to turn, and step left when you are expecting them to go right. You won't see the bigger twists coming, more than likely, and it may even succeed in tricking you as to how things are going to end. The way in which the various parts fall together is very creative.

This is easily one of the better films I've seen this year. All the main characters play their parts well. Almost all are unknowns, save for Watts herself who's starting to be a known entity since last year's Mulholland Dr. The child actor playing her son is at least as good as Haley Joel Osment was in The Sixth Sense. The editing may seem a little MTV-like in places, but it suits the mood when it happens. And the rest of it is just appropriately dark and gloomy.

Well worth your money.