For those hording toilet paper

Passing thoughts that came to me while watching The Ring, and I wanted to address them off the top.

I can see that there was this point in time where a child linked to the plot in a horror film had a distinctive eerieness to them. This aura of weird that followed them scene to scene. It was ripe for lampooning as the Scary Movie films proved. The Ring followed that trend, with little David Dorfman (who would also appear as another creepy kid in the remake of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre) seemingly "clairvoyant" or equipped with this "sense" (yeah, kind of calls us back to The Sixth Sense, doesn't it?) of knowing more about the death of Tamblyn than anyone else.

A key "witness" to what happened to Tamblyn now rests in an institution, the horror of what happened leaving her a mental case. However, Dorfman "knows" as well. He says so when being put to bed by mama Watts, acknowledging that Tamblyn felt she was going to die. Watts' finding a book of Tamblyn's with faces "ink-scratched away", and photographs of her stay with friends at a mountain resort displaying warped faces urges her to pursue what was the source of "the videotape" (as mentioned at Tamblyn's wake by a high school student (played by Adam Brody, right before The O.C.) and the story behind it.

Another thing that passed my mind is the way I'm afraid the film might paint a working woman. Watts is a very outspoken woman who isn't afraid to shush away her boss at a big Seattle paper when he's wanting details on her "new story". She even called him a rather choice insult when he was admonishing her before picking up her kid at school. He had her dress prepared for the wake and was already dressed in his suit (even successfully tying his own tie!) while she was oblivious to where it was and that her little boy was already near ready to go. As a single mom, Watts doesn't have it easy and pursuing her passion (journalism) with a child and seemingly a father out of the picture shouldn't be viewed as something contemptible, but I'm afraid some viewers will see it that way.