Rings is the second sequel to The Ring – the one about the cursed video tape which, once you watch it, gives you seven days to live. It basically ignores Ring 2, which is for the best… though it does repeat some of its plot elements. But it also basically repeats the original film too so par for the course. Once again we have the cursed video, Samara the Ghost Girl crawling out of tvs, and an investigation of the past. We don’t get the history of the ghost girl this time, but about other elements of her past and her family. Whether we want it or not.
The movie looks good and that’s about all I can say good about it. It’s dark and murky in the usual, “would someone turn on the lights?” kind of way but at least it is done with some amount of skill. Unfortunately, there’s nothing scary or even original to this film – it adds nothing new except for some more back story that doesn’t really add much to the ghost girl’s story. As if we need more. We get jump cuts and shots of the well, flies, Samara crawling out of TVs… all the usual stuff. There’s a hint of advanced technology in that the video tape has been turned into video files and, at one point, Samara has to crawl out of an iphone. I wanted to see more of that, but no, the movie does nothing with her crawling out of a tiny screen.
There is ONE original idea and if the movie had followed that plot thread, it might have been very interesting. It turns out that Johnny Gillecki (from Big Bang Theory) is a college professor running experiments on the video tape and is tracking college student he’s recruited to watch it. I perked up when this plot was introduced – bringing a scientific exploration involving quantum theory could have been interesting. But this first act storyline is promptly dropped in order to give us a couple college kids investigating backstories, just like Naomi Watts did in the first film.
So, yeah, a hint of a good idea replaced by super generic PG13 “lets target the teen market” horror flick. It’s a sequel that retreads the events of the first and somehow borrows from its ignored sequel. There’s no particular need to see this movie. Watch the first. Hell, watch the original Japanese Ringu. Maybe even watch the upcoming Japanese Ring vs. The Grudge movie. It’ll probably be terrible too but at least it’ll be original.
Score: 58