Rings (2017)

Review

"There's this video that kills you. Seven days after you watch it. The second it's over … the phone rings." - Holt

Julia sends her boyfriend off to college with the promise that he will skype with her at 9:30 every evening, hey she learnt everything she knows from my wife, patent pending. Six weeks later and young love is still going strong as Hoyt skypes, unfortunately as Julia decides to get the girls out Hoyt suffers a bit of a room invasion and is dragged off to some nefarious college shenanigans. Or so Julia believes, things are actually worse. With Hoyt no longer skyping and not answering his phone Julia is getting worried, and this isn't helped when she gets a skype from some seemingly hysterical chick using Hoyt's computer. Naturally, Julia being psycho, she heads down to the College to check out the situation and ensure her man isn't being enticed into, let's say some frolicking off the reservation.

Holt has been earning some extracurricular credits by taking part in Professor Gabriel investigation into human souls and the beyond. Gabriel got a hold of a certain tape, has done his research, and has students watching the deadly short, but hey they get a "tail" who watches a copy they make and that heads into a cycle on an express elevator to hell. Naturally there are some casualties as our water logged revenant collects her bounty. Hoyt is next in line so Julia watches the vid, and then gets the phone call. It's a race against time to try and find a cure before Samara decides on visiting Julia and things go down the well. Strap in Kids we're back in familiar territory after a dozen year gap between Samara gigs. Does this movie resurrect the franchise or is it a final footnote in the series?

Whoa two things dropped through the weekend, one of which was good and the other not so good, you decide which is which. Firstly, and the reason for this review, Rings the long awaited third movie in the Ring franchise North American edition hit disc. Hey wasn't going to wait around kids, the second movie may have had problems - attack of the CGI deer anyone, but something of a fan of the whole Sadako/Samara bad girl thing the movies has going down. The second thing that happen was more news orientated, Aussie tennis legend Margaret Court decided to out the "lesbos" on the female tennis circuit in particularly shrill fashion. Naturally this sort of 1950s mentality really didn't go down well with the PC brigades, tennis players, or anyone aghast at Marg being this narrow minded. Hey the bigoted world of John Howard lives on, hopefully the people promoting this shite are dying out quicker rather than slower.

Director Gutierraz starts his movie the way he means to continue, by breaking about every scrap of Ring mythology that has been built up over numerous different movies from numerous different Countries. We are on-board an airliner on descent into Seattle, and learn one of the passengers watched the infamous tape exactly seven days previously. I was actually bopping to this concept - dude is going to get Samararised (trademark pending) on board a plane, should be interesting. Unfortunately, for the viewer and about anyone invested in the mythos, the infamous black and white well scene starts playing on every screen in the plane, including weirdly a couple in the cockpit as Samara decides times to get some work done. We learn in a none too subtle back flash a couple of years later that the plane went down, uhmm isn't Samara like a Doberman pincher with a one track mind, not a revenant taken to collateral damage?

This segways, in one of the more implausible ways, into Professor Gabriel purchasing a VHS player at a rumpus sale. Items apparently from the dude that died during the plane crash that we learn happened two years ago. Hey and you'll never guess what tape is left in the player which the Prof naturally manages to view, with some unexpected results. So hands up who would tend to buy a second hand VHS player, what nobody, what a shocker. On the bright side we are also introduced to Sky, who may or may not be getting funky with the Prof, and the ground work is laid for Gabriel's research project, which doesn't seem to warrant University investigation since it's not like it involves the use of University property and the odd student death. Not quite sure how poking a stick at Samara is going to prove we're all soul men, and ladies, or there being another side, as it's only by mistake that the water logged one gets to make the scene. Hell, your guess is as good as mine, just another thing you are going to have to take on faith with this flick.

So anyways it boils down to our gal Jules, who may or may not be a lesbian on the women's tennis circle, to track down her errant boyfriend and see if she can't extract his sorry arse from the mess he is currently in. She has a slight side track where she discovers via Sky just what Samara's schlock is about, but overall the chick is one fem guided missile of ex-girlfriend insanity. During the mid-parts of Rings we discover your bloke is pretty piss weak and as much use as stale bottle of beer at a 21st. This by the way is pretty lazy writing and lacks anything in terms of character building or well, good movie making etc. Get ready for plot overload as we discover there's a conspiracy of silence in a small out of the way hamlet over the exact origins of Samara and why she might just have a little vindictive stretch to her, in fact you could say don't breathe a word! Horror fans are going to see what I did there.

For anyone who is a graduate of the whole Ring cycle of movies, and yes I did just use that reference, the mythology being spewed on to our screens through acts one and two is going to be head banging desk bad times. In his rush to layer on another jump scare or a shocking moment that has the audience more bored than clenching their bum cheeks director Gutierraz misses the salient point of Ring movies, it's all about tension and build up, it's not about cheap scare tactics.

Another of those movies that is so dark at times that you really can't work out what is going down. A bit more lightening would of helped, but hey slot it up to attempts at atmosphere or something. Of even more concern was the final twist, which can be seen lumbering over the horizon from about the midway mark. If you have seen The Ring 2 then you know exactly what I'm talking about, hell if you have seen any one of a dozen movies covering the same ground you know what I'm talking about. Aden could have pointed out to Julia that you don't muck around with Samara's little needs, check out The Ring and The Ring 2 for homework if a little on the horror retarded side of things. So yeah you could say major and unfixable problems with the plot, it's a friggin mess, sorry folks I don't take mucking around with the mythos as anything like a good thing to do. And if you think that's where the problems with this movie end then you are going to be sadly disappointed on viewing.

So I ran out of room here and had a tonne more to say on what is probably the death knell for the Ring franchise in Hollywood, you just don't want to know what's going over in Japan, versus coming at you kids. While I'm more than happy with movies taking franchises forward, rather than turgid remakes and reboots, those movies actually have to be good and have to build on the mythology created in the franchise. Rings pays lip service to the ideas presented in previous movies while adding on a bunch of stuff that really doesn't gel that well with how Samara rolls, we get scenes that are there because the plot required them to be there and not due to how those scenes should be working within the confines of being a Ring movie. As a standalone movie Rings is overly derivative, as part of a franchise it erodes confidence in that franchise. End of day director F Javier Gutierraz is showing a streak of cowardice here, Rings is a movie the studio wanted but true horror fans are going to be increasingly disappointed in as things go off the reservation to no good reason. No recommendation folks, lacks the impact of the previous movies, I don't even think those lesbo tennis players are going to like this overtly dark self-involved mess.