Rings
Directed by: F. Javier Gutiérrez
Written by: David Loucka and Jacob Estes and Akiva Goldsman
Starring: Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Vincent D’Onofrio, Aimee Teegarden, Jill Jane Clements, Bonnie Morgan
Drama/Horror - 102 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Feb 2017
Written by: David Loucka and Jacob Estes and Akiva Goldsman
Starring: Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Vincent D’Onofrio, Aimee Teegarden, Jill Jane Clements, Bonnie Morgan
Drama/Horror - 102 min Reviewed by Charlie Juhl on 3 Feb 2017
The movie poster for Rings, pardon me, The Ring 3, states, “First you watch it. Then you die.” That about sums up what it feels like to sit through this gargantuan waste of time and effort. Also, when half the movie trailer does not appear in the finished product, you know some studio-directed heavy re-shoots occurred. Need another indicator? Rings was filmed three years ago and sat on the shelf; all involved realized the quality product they had on their hands. Put all the warnings together and Rings is a glacial slog through explanations of seven day TV monitor phenomena we already know, a Scooby-Doo mystery where it pretty much turns out to be Old Man Withers, and features some of the worst acting this side of your local middle school’s attempt at A Midsummer’s Night Dream.
Rings opens up with a pulse quickening attention-getter. A boy who saw the infamous videocassette is on a plane seven days later. In a very selfish act by the boy, the girl from the well is undeterred by modes of transportation and unencumbered by TSA. She dribbles and oozes down the aisle and takes out the entire aircraft. Jump forward two years and cool guy university teacher, Professor Gabriel (Johnny Galecki), accidentally watches the video because of his love for vintage tech; he couldn’t resist that broken VCR at the local flea market.
Rings opens up with a pulse quickening attention-getter. A boy who saw the infamous videocassette is on a plane seven days later. In a very selfish act by the boy, the girl from the well is undeterred by modes of transportation and unencumbered by TSA. She dribbles and oozes down the aisle and takes out the entire aircraft. Jump forward two years and cool guy university teacher, Professor Gabriel (Johnny Galecki), accidentally watches the video because of his love for vintage tech; he couldn’t resist that broken VCR at the local flea market.
As the first two Ring films came out in 2002 and 2005, VCRs were still employed in the standard family living room. Jump to present day, you can now copy/paste Samara Morgan’s video with a mere right click. Technology makes it so easy now to make the dreaded video borderline viral. Professor Gabriel, who looks old enough to be a mid-level associate professor who perhaps recently achieved tenure, inexplicably owns an entire floor of a university building just for his studies. So much about dying after you watch a video from a girl who pops out of screens to kill you strains credulity, but one professor owning an entire floor? Bullshit!
Oh right, our main characters. Well, Holt (Alex Roe, The 5th Wave) heads off to college leaving behind his high school sweetheart, Julia (Matilda Lutz), who stays back to care for her sick mother or something. We never see the mother and Julia takes off after Holt later with no mention of care, so it must not be a big deal. Julia’s mother pops up in the trailer though. Want to understand the level of love between Holt and Julia? During their last morning together before the long drive to school, he tells her the story of Orpheus and the underworld and that, “I relate to the guy. I can’t imagine not looking back at you.” That line is courtesy of three screenwriters, David Loucka, Jacob Estes, and Akiva Goldsman; you know, the guy who won an Oscar for writing A Beautiful Mind.
Holt sees the video, Julia tracks him down because he’s ignoring her phone calls, yada yada yada, they end up in a middle-of-nowhere small town to uncover the truth about Samara and why she’s so darn mad. F. Javier Gutiérrez sets up most of the sequences as a mystery rather than a slow-boiling horror. In the first Ring, we had to wait until the end for Samara to crawl out of the screen; we see that festival sideshow twice within the opening half hour here. The first film, already a re-make of an earlier Japanese film, was an effective horror film; I remember dread and fear in the audience. Nobody saw The Ring Two and now the movie poster assures you what you’re in for: First you watch it; then you roll your eyes on the way home because this movie is terrible.
Comment Box is loading comments...
