Rings (2017)

Movie Info

Samara doesn’t care if you’re on a plane!!!

The death of a man (Zach Roerig) on a flight leads to his belongings being sold by his family and the discovery of a mysterious tape by a professor named Gabriel (Johnny Galecki).  The tape houses Samara (Bonnie Morgan) and Samara’s horror is reborn again as her video begins to spread again through Gabriel’s experiments.  When Julia (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) finds her boyfriend Holt (Alex Roe) caught up in Gabriel’s test, she watches the video and finds her time counting down.  Something is different about Julia and her video…and Julia must find the answers before her seven days are up.

Directed by F. Javier Gutierrez, Rings is a horror sequel to The Ring Two from 2005.  The movie was released to poor reviews but a strong box-office return.

Ringu started something even bigger than the story of Ring…it started a trend of bringing Asian horror to the U.S. that went on for a number of years.  Now, Rings follows the trends of soft relaunches of movies.  Rings can stand alone, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it should.

…and someone looking for trouble finds it (shock & awe)

The story for Rings kind of follows The Ring but on a “modern” telling with the idea of retro technology and hipsters thrown in.  This isn’t a good thing.  While The Ring was scary, Rings doesn’t seem to get the scares or fears.  The movie doesn’t really build the fear through the story, change the story enough, and tries for scares instead of written fear…this builds to an ending you see coming a mile away.

The cast is pretty uninspired.  Johnny Galecki plays essentially a jerk version of his nerdy Leonard from The Big Bang Theory.  He’s joined by rather generic boy/girl combo of Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz and Alex Roe.  They aren’t bad, but they also aren’t interesting enough to drive the dull plot.  Vincent D’Onofrio tries to add his weirdness to the story, but it is too little and too late to save the movie.

Guess who’s back!

The movie opts to show more than the original version of The Ring.  The Ring really built to the final scene where Samara just out and out pulls herself from the television.  Here, you see virtually the same image again (better looking), but it lacks the shock value…I think that new viewers would have probably looked up the original on YouTube if they didn’t watch the movie.

Rings feels like an unnecessary and uninteresting sequel.  The movie is meant to potentially start a new franchise, but that has been left up in the air despite the financial success.  Don’t watch the tape…but not because it’s cursed but because it isn’t good.

Related Links:

The Ring (2002)

The Ring Two (2005)

Ringu (1998)

Ringu 2 (1999)