Cast: Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Aimee Teegarden, Vincent D’Onofrio, Bonnie Morgan
Director: F. Javier Gutierrez
Synopsis: A young woman finds herself on the receiving end of a terrifying curse that threatens to take her life in 7 days.
Review:
You know that half-giddy feeling you get when you’re about to be in a serious car crash and narrowly miss? That’s how I felt as I walked out of the screening of Rings. My date for the night saw the odd look on my face and figured I didn’t like the movie.
I actually did like it. A bit. It wasn’t a great movie by any stretch, but it wasn’t the car crash I thought it was gonna be. That counts for something, I guess.
For those who are not familiar with The Ring series, the center of the movies are a cursed videotape and the evil inside. People who watch the tape have seven days to live. Gabriel (Johnny Galecki) inherits the curse after finding the videotape in an old VCR. Interested in what the tape can reveal about the undead – and looking to save his ass – he copies the tape and shows it to other students. A sort of group lab/cult forms around the deciphering of the video as other students are tricked into becoming “tails” by being shown a copy of the movie in order to spare the student that saw it before.
Holt (Alex Roe) is unwittingly sucked into becoming a tail. In order to save his life, his girlfriend Julia (Matilda Lutz) watches the video and is cursed. Her video, however, is different, and both its contents and visions she sees lead her and Holt into a quest to discover the origins of the video.
Rings was in a bit of developmental hell, being delayed a couple of times before its final release. It was originally supposed to be a prequel to the original The Ring, but that didn’t seem to make sense. The original movies had an origin story for Samara (Bonnie Morgan), the evil being in the cursed videotape. If Rings was to be a prequel, were they planning to retcon something else about Samara?
The indecision shows in the film. Rings seems more like a reboot – I think. The origin has changed in some aspects from the original, but others stick around. The movie also seems to give up on itself towards the end, suddenly morphing into Don’t Breathe for a bit. Let’s just say that cohesion is not one of this movie’s strong suits.
Oh, and the scares were very few and ridiculously contrived. The first half of the movie relied a bit too much on cheap jump scares, where a loud noise tries to jolt you for effect. Maybe I’m a horror snob that feels a movie has to earn the right to throw a cheap jump scare in. If that’s the case, this movie didn’t earn it.
So what enjoyment did I get from this movie? What saved it from being a complete car wreck? For one, the directing was well done. F. Javier Gutierrez (Before the Fall) has proven before that he knows how to direct, and his time at the helm of this movie hasn’t shaken that belief. The cinematography was effective, giving real weight to the tense moments and framing the movie the way a horror movie is framed nowadays. This is not on the levels of Shyamalan (say what you want about the bloke, but the man knows how to frame a shot. I mean…have you SEEN Split????), but it worked. Also, the acting was quite competent. The only actors here with cred are Galecki and Vincent D’Onofrio (seriously, is that man in EVERYTHING nowadays?), who has a short but important role later in the narrative. I never felt like this movie was overly hokey or campy. Though the tension was lacking at points, I never felt like I wanted to bolt for the exits in disgust.
Those positive points weren’t enough to elevate the movie past average. In the end, Rings was not very good. It was too scattershot, and I feel it tried to lean too much on cues to the original movies. At times, I felt it wanted to pander to fans of the original movie. It couldn’t carve out an identity for itself, though it tried to. The best I can say about it is that it’s pleasantly average.
About an hour after I saw it, I was at home, and I was at the point where one would get the shakes. I had none. If I had gotten the shakes, it would’ve been more shakes than the movie itself gave me.
Good: Competent direction; adequate acting; Vincent D’Onofrio
Bad: Not sure if it’s a reboot or retcon; weak on the tension; relied too much on memories of original
Verdict: 4 out of 10
