Like any movies with an iconic curse, the unavoidable pestilence of January horror films finally captured everybody's attention. Frankly, "Rings" is a dreadful movie: it's unsurprisingly plotted, blandly shot and boring. While the previous holder of the January 2017 crown for Worst Horror Movie, The Bye Bye Man, was at least fascinating in its incompetence, Rings is so dull it will have you wishing Samara would come out from the screen and put you out of your delusion too.
When professor Dr. Gabriel (Johnny Galecki) trips upon the notorious VHS tape, he begins a testing on his campus to explore the death and the reality of the soul. With some of his students as test subjects, he extends the curse by having each student sway others to watch it. One of the students, Holt (Alex Roe), mysteriously vanishes, lifting the suspicion of Holt's girlfriend, Julia (Matilda Lutz). Julia tracks down Holt and discovers a video. Guided by apparitions, Julia, and Holt works calmly to discover Samara's origin and stop her scourge once and for all.
The Forgettable Beginning
Back in the days of VHS and analog television, the original Rings and its cover version fed into the urban legend craze of the late 90s and early 2000s. Add in the "spooky miss calls" and Internet curses that showcased all the anger and you had a great pattern for a horror movie. But, in an age where nearly everything is digital and easily exposed, these thoughts seem dated. Rings falls into the trap of not recognizing these changes in media feasting and feels like a recap of something no longer applicable in a modern world. In the era of YouTube, Vine, and Twitter, why are social media and online videos not the film's pivotal opinion? Unluckily, the only event when the film even bothers to admit that it takes place in 2017 and not 2002 are in the introductory and concluding scenes, which feel like a teaser of what it could have been.
Rings 2017: The Irrelevant Sequel
Maybe the most horrifying part of the movie is Lutz's acting. She can't give the impression or portray anything that resembles a personality and with the lack of originality, she makes your average 1980s slasher movie character seem airy. Johnny Galecki, mostly playing Leonard from The Big Bang Theory, is illegally underused in his roughly 40 minutes of screen time, mugging us of the only remotely intriguing character.
Rings just shouldn't exist. It's a completely pointless story to an irrelevant series. At two long hours, the film's narrative lacks any partings from a formula that can justify its filled-up plot. You shouldn't be surprised that a January horror film was this awful. Nevertheless, it is frustrating it doesn't embrace the clarity that would address just how horrifying Samara's evil would be in our modern world.
