Rings

Starring: Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Vincent D'Onofrio, Aimee Teegarden, Bonnie Morgan
Directed by: F. Javier Gutierrez
Rating: PG-13
Genre: Drama, Horror
2017

Times Seen:
Tim: 1

Summary: A young woman watches a mysterious video and is told she has seven days until she dies.

Review:

Tim: It's hard for me to describe how much I loved The Ring. It's still one of my all-time favorite horror movies. The Ring Two wasn't anywhere near as good, but it was still a solid horror sequel. Twelve years later, we get Rings. I was excited for this film to see the end of the trilogy, but I felt trepidation at the long gap between films. Unfortunately, my worst fears were realized. This might not quite be a bad movie, but it's clearly the worst of the three films. I was hoping this movie would reverse the trend, but it just highlights it.

Now, there are some cool things in this movie. I loved revisiting Samara's video, given all the technological advancements that have happened in the decade plus since the last film. With streaming video, it puts a new, interesting twist on the VHS tapes from the original. The movie actually does a fairly decent job of incorporating new technology into the story. It's one of the better aspects of this film. I had a lot of fun seeing how they incorporated that into the story.

Unfortunately, the rest of the story is a fairly run-of-the-mill horror film. There's nothing new or especially exciting about any of this. The story is the same- a girl has seven days to uncover a new Samara mystery or she's going to die. We've seen this twice before and a decade later, it just felt recycled- there wasn't anything new the story could add, other than filling in a few more details about Samara's past. I suppose that's mildly interesting, but it just felt like a path we'd been down before. The film wasn't especially scary- we get mostly the same cheap horror scares you can find in any movie. The first film was so good because it all felt fresh, exciting, believable. This movie went through the motions. Director F. Javier Gutierrez simply wasn't up for the challenge. This is only the second feature film he's directed, and the first in 9 years. He seemed rusty. The Ring worked because it had an incredibly talented filmmaker in Gore Verbinski behind the camera. Gutierrez has very little of the same kind of talent. This is a generic, interchangeable horror film.

The cast is pretty bland. Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz was fine, but there's nothing special about her performance here. Same can be said for Alex Roe- I didn't hate his performance, but it was typical horror movie average. It was fun seeing Johnny Galecki cast against type (somewhat), but it's not like he is a great actor. I did love having Vincent D'Onofrio here- he always makes movies better. Still, the cast as a whole didn't do a whole lot for me.

Now, while I have plenty of complaints about Rings (which is a super cool title, I have to admit), this isn't a totally poor movie. It was legitimately fun revisiting this world after so long an absence. There's still some goodwill left over from the original film. It made me happy to see Samara and her crazy video once again. There were fun moments sprinkled throughout the film, and I did enjoy learning more about her horrid past. I wanted to like this movie a lot more than I did. It's clearly the worst film of the franchise and doesn't offer any hope that future movies would be better. This franchise needs to end at three films. That being said, there's worse horror movies out there.

Rating 1-10
Tim's Rating: 6



If You Enjoyed This Movie, We Recommend: The Ring, The Ring Two, Sinister, Insidious