Rings (2017)

Sadako, who became Samara in the American version of The Ring, kicked off an international wave of Asian horror films and remakes.  Most of the ghosts were modeled after her in some way and it became just one more part of the great horror pantheon that included masked killers, vampires, werewolves and the like.  It helped that the American version was also pretty good and became an international hit just like the 1998 version of the story, Ringu.   

But then came The Ring Two.  Directed by Hideo Sakata, who made the first two Japanese films, the movie suffered from both severe studio interference and the abandonment of the original method of Samara's killing and turned into just another film about a woman trying to keep her child from being possessed.  Much of what happened was treading the same ground, although Rachel, played by Naomi Watts, was finally able to put an end to Samara by entering her realm and properly placing the cap on the well so she couldn't escape.  Although that usually wouldn't be enough to keep an angry spirit from haunting numerous sequels, the second didn't do as well and the Asian horror trend, at least in the United States, was dying down.  

10 years later Paramount decided to try to see if it could once again squeeze the franchise for a little more juice, this time with Rings.  The finished film itself sat around in limbo for the next two years with reshoots and rewrites.  In the end it was not based on any of the previous films and it decided to do away with everything that happened in The Ring Two in favor of being a direct sequel to the first film.  As flawed as The Ring Two was, it still had its moments and brought the story to an end, even though the first one had an ending that was satisfying enough.  Rings, on the other hand, is largely an exercise in tedium. 

Gabriel (Johnny Galecki), a college professor, purchases a VCR at a flee market and finds Samara's tape jammed inside.  He makes a digital copy and has his girlfriend Sky (Aimee Teegarden) watch it, confirming what needs to be done to avoid the curse.  Curious about what this means about the afterlife he signs up a number of his students, including a freshman named Holt (Alex Roe), for experiments revolving around digital copies made of the tape.  When Holt's girlfriend Julia (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) becomes concerned that he is not answering her calls she travels to the college and watches Holt's copy in order to save him.

When she attempts to make a copy, however, the file is larger and has more images.  It appears that Samara is reaching out to Julia.  The clues lead back to the island where Samara grew up and it is revealed that, though she was interred in the local graveyard after her remains were found in the well, they were later moved after a series of disasters that a local priest attributed to her.  Thinking that properly cremating the remains will put Samara at rest Julia and Holt begin a search for the body, but also find out secrets involving Samara's true parents and the true reason she wants to be set free. 

The main problem with Rings is that there really is no reason for it to exist.  It doesn't even really know what it wants to do as a movie.  F. Javier Gutiérrez occasionally shows a bit of style and also some callbacks to Gore Verbinski's work on the original, but largely it is just bland.  The movie seems put together from chunks of different ideas, and it had at least three writers, so that doesn't surprise me.  For instance there is never any explanation for Gabriel's experiments or what he intends to prove by having students watch the tape and keep making copies, as Samara doesn't appear until the moment of her victim's death, and whatever reasons he had cease to matter about 20 minutes in.  

I also couldn't stand Matilda Lutz and Alex Roe.  I can't put my finger on it, but I think it was just that they never felt like a real couple.  The dialogue might have something to do with it as it never felt like two people speaking in a real manner at all.  By the end where it is revealing Samara's origins the whole thing feels like another movie tacked on to what came before.  While Vincent D'Onofrio brings one of the few decent performances in the last third it is still all stuff that's been seen before in other horror films.  

It's not an unwatchable movie, but it is also not interesting nor is it bad in an entertaining sort of way.  It is like many horror films were a decade before this - lazy, badly written and forgettable.  It's some of the worst things that any movie can be, and if there was anything truly entertaining it got left behind in the multiple reshoots. 

Rings (2017)

Time: 102 minutes

Starring: Mathilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Vincent D'Onofrio

Director: F. Javier Gutiérrez