Review #39: Rings (2017)

This review was originally written in October 2017.

Horror Movie October day 10: Rings

After watching The Ring twO yesterday, I figured I might as well go ahead and watch the reboot (or whatever this is). I hoped it was going to be good- and it started off kind of interesting. The first portion of the movie's concept is neat: a college professor stumbles across the old VHS tape and (somehow) figures out its mechanics, and then proceeds to turn it into a science project. He organizes a group of college students to watch the tape, then they convince someone else to watch it, and so on and so on, so that he can study Samara and determine what it means about the nature of a soul and the afterlife. Cool, right?

Well, if that were the focus of the movie then I'd say this sounds like a great movie. Instead, much like the cursed tape portion of The Ring twO, it goes on for about twenty minutes and then is completely forgotten. Instead, the movie follows a different character who watches the tape (now converted to a digital video file, cuz hey that makes enough sense right?) to save her boyfriend, and somehow or another her version of the tape becomes an entirely new tape, with new symbols and blah blah blah- basically a reboot of the original film. (I was unclear going in whether this was a sequel or a reboot- I guess it's one of the growing trend that is both.)

So she goes on a goose chase just like the first film, except I felt it had none of the stakes of the original. In the original, the main character was constantly being reminded that she only had a few days to live- in this one, she isn't. Maybe I missed it but I feel like once she watches the tape, there's no tracking the passage of time or even any concern for it. Also, I thought it funny that this movie uses props and footage from both of the previous movies (implying it's a sequel) despite much of the backstory being incongruous with the previous movies. (This movie is about trying to find Samara's mother, who it turns out was buried alive below a church long long ago, despite her being alive and well in a mental institution in the previous film.)

This movie also spends almost the entire runtime acting like Samara isn't the bad guy, she's just a hurt little girl and if we try hard enough we can save her. Except lolnope, the end has her taking over a computer and sending the video out to everybody! Because nobody saw that coming, haha suckers!

All in all I was disappointed, but I don't know why I had high hopes to begin with.

Final rating: 5/10 Textbooks about Samara and the haunted tape because why not

Actor Who They Should've Gotten to Play the Professor: John Goodman