Whenever I walk out of the theater after a movie I liked, the same two people are always walking out in front of me, saying something like “Gawd, that was the worst movie I have ever seen in my life!”

I saw The Ring tonight, and my review is thus: the purpose of a horror movie is to string you along in dreadful anticipation of what you know you have to see but do not want to. The Ring is a good horror movie because it does that for almost two full hours, and in addition to doing that is technically well made.

In fact, John didn’t consider it very scary, but I sure did. I’d say it’s one of the scarier movies I’ve ever seen, though I’m not much of an afficionado of the horror genre. In any case, people kept leaving their seats to go into the lobby, then coming back in a few minutes later, than leaving again when you could tell a scary part was coming, so they seem to agree with me. Note that I stayed in my seat the entire time, though I did readjust my pea coat more often than was strictly necessary.

But these two people of which I have spoken: They are a couple. The woman is pretty in a cold, sharp-featured way, and the man is shorter than average. They both wear pretentious coats. The woman’s is very long, and is usually black with a fur collar and a belt around the back like they have on bathrobes. The man’s pretentious coat is usually imitation leather and goes down to his waist. They both have fashionable haircuts. Their general appearance is of strained bourgeois pseudo-intellectualism. You get the sense that they go to a lot of movies, but ridicule all of the ones that don’t have subtitles, then they go home and have passionless sex underneath a print they bought at a gallery full of paintings they pretended to be affected by.

Then, the next morning, they share a poached pear and some cottage cheese over breakfast and discuss what movie I will probably see next, so that they can go and shit on it.

As I walk out of the theater, the woman, as I’ve told you, inevitably says “that is the worst movie I’ve ever seen,” then the man nods, and after a beat she adds, ”... although I haven’t seen Battlefield Earth!” and then the man laughs.

Sorry, The Ring was not the worst movie you’ve ever seen, unless you’ve only seen two movies in your life and the other one was Army of Darkness (Fuckin’ Rad!)

I’m not saying it was a great film. Look, it was a very freaky horror movie with a Lovecraftian premise that I really liked, and I was really worried I’d have to see the little girl’s face, which eventually I did, but it wasn’t as creepy as I thought it would be.

What I want to say is that it was not great, but not horrible by anyone’s standards. A horrible movie sends out retard waves that everyone can feel, and my retard-sense was not tingling during this movie.

So shut up, you two assholes.