Round and Round They Go, Rings Doesn’t Go Far

 Talk about going in circles, Rings doesn’t go very far. 

Rings is the poorly uninspired titled third movie and latest installment in The Ring franchise (were showrunners trying to pull off what Alien did with their sequel Aliens?) playing in theatres.  Rings is the follow-up to 2005’s The Ring 2; twelve years has passed since we first set eyes on the deranged little girl Samara who was cast down into a well whose wrath unleashed a cursed videotape that violently kills anyone who watches it. The instant the video ends the phone rings and Samara’s voice on the line warns, “7 days”. Here in Rings we only have to stick around for about  2 hours. If it seems like the run time is a touch overlong for a horror movie that’s because it is. It’s not for lack of plot that is the problem-- it’s actually the opposite, too much plot to the point that by trying to cram it all in, Rings noticeably drags and loses steam.

Rings distinguishes itself by re-imagining how Samara’s curse may evolve with the times and how circumstances can be different for the unfortunate viewers who stumble upon her video today, in 2017. This means that this go around is an entirely new cast of characters not affiliated with journalist Rachel (Naomi Watts) or her creepy son Aidan (David Dorfman).

One of the very first scenes in Rings introduces us to a college professor Gabriel (Johnny Galecki) who comes in possession of a copy of Samara’s video. He gets down to business pronto and frames a research experiment around what he calls “The Samara Effect” (which also happens to be the title of the his book of his findings that he publishes). His overarching goal? To prove that the body has a soul, and to find out if said soul is eternal. Being on campus has its perks and he recruits “subjects” for his study from his classes with enticing offers of internships and extra credits. Gabriel embarks on the mother of all vanity projects and since informed consent isn’t exactly his style, more than a few of his students come down with some serious side effects. Like dying. Violently. So he devises a plan that assigns each student a “tail”, aka a new victim to watch the video.

Yup! Let's get right on that. Not sketchy at all!

The plot in Rings revolves around a teenager named Julie (Matilda Anna Lutz) and her quest to save her boyfriend Holt (Alex Roe) from an untimely death at the hands of Samara’s curse. So we’ve got our typical dreamy teen couple horror movie protags. Holt is built like G.I. Joe but with the sensitivity and sweetness of a Ken doll. Actor Alex Roe is also pushing thirty and that combined with his hunky figure and six-pack means that he’s cast as an eighteen-year-old boy who’s headed off to college for the first time. Because uh apparently aging up characters to actually fit the profile of their actors, (imagine Roe as a graduate school student) is too much work and junk for showrunners. So, welcome to university Billy Madison!

Holt is a shameless piece of eye-candy and has about as much personality as the plastic action figures he so resembles. He also gets roped in his professor Gabriel’s little project and decides to deal with the consequences of watching the video but ignoring and cutting off contact with his long-time girlfriend Julie. Solution? Nope. By evading her radar, this hot piece of ass only makes Julie even more determined to track him down.

For what it’s worth, at least Julie isn’t sexualized. However that alone is not enough. Unlike female leads in some of the other recent horror movies like Don’t Breathe, Split and Lights Out , Lutz’s  character is bland and while her acting is passable it’s in no way impressive. We learn absolutely zero about her likes, interests, family life, goals--nothing, nada! What we do know is that 1) Julie is very basic, and 2) she’s very devoted to Holt. There we go, insta-girl-next-door-lead!  Julie starts off as a girl with some smarts in that she doesn’t fall for the horror movie trope nonsense, but once she finds out Holt’s Samara’s next victim her sensibility goes out the door, ‘natch. Which means she watches the video and opts to “sacrifice” herself for Holt. What she doesn’t expect is to be plagued by sudden vivid hallucinations and being “marked” on day one, when the phone receiver burns and scars her hand. It’s not long before she puts two and two together and realizes she’s seeing the past, with Holt in tow, Julie frantically pursues the truth about Samara and Samara’s mother, Evelyn. But but wait, the unresolved college storyline?! Yeahhhh no, we’ll just jump into a new storyline all together! YOLO bitches!  

Holt and Julie under her umbrella-ella-ella-eh-eh-eh.

Of course, the place Holt and Julie seek out answers in is a generic small and sleepy town with a dark past and shady characters that just about everyone living there knows about. Yawn. These scenes and set designs are bland and uninspired and considering this movie could’ve gone ANYWHERE creatively, really very disappointing.

The story here is compelling and ambitious even. It just never quite reaches its full potential. It’s in this way that Rings reminds me of The Village-- fascinating concept but meh execution. Rings doesn’t tread any unfamiliar soil, and while a twist character reveal at the end isn’t exactly shocking, it’s interesting enough to make watching the movie somewhat worth it! One of the ways Rings succeeds is in the sheer amount of gross-out horror in the movie. There are bug infestations, skin peeling off in clumps, and the thick hairball that Julie gags on and struggles to wrench out of her throat (as seen in the trailer), that all turns up the ick-factor and made my skin crawl. The video, too, and the brilliant concept of having a video within a video, is a heck of a lot creepier and more disturbing than the original in The Ring.

I’ve also got to give props to how Rings cast professional contortionist Bonnie Morgan as Samara this time around. They forgo CGI effects to actually show us a lady who does some seriously freaky stunts on the camera. Her nimble footwork and impressively twisty, turny, movements are pretty darn incredible to watch and give Samara a more ominous look.  

Hint: this guy, bad news.

There are elements of a whodunit it Rings --especially in the small-town B-plot which becomes the main plot-- but instead of adding more to the story, the mystery feels rushed and hurried into the script. Instead, it should’ve been the central focus from the start and the whole college-setting storyline could’ve been trimmed out or at least significantly cut down. Those scenes after all, were the weaker of the bunch. Plus, talk about unresolved! We do see what deliciously gruesome fate befalls Gabriel (in what’s arguably one of the most disturbing scenes in the movies) but the rest is just..dropped. The backstory in Rings also eats up a lot of runtime and is so comprehensive that cinema-goers who haven’t watched The Ring will easily be able to keep track of the events of the story. But erm this also means audience out there who are aware of what happened in the previous movies may find the “refresher course” to be redundant. Yours truly included!  

Rings is a solid enough scary movie, but it doesn’t go the distance to become a new classic. By trying to accomplish so much at once, Rings never quite finds a consistent tone or rhythm. It doesn’t try hard to be extraordinary either. It does, however expand the universe of The Ring. The eerie and cliffhanger ending is one of the strongest scenes in the movie, but it also feels like a money grab, one that’s ripe for infinite sequels and installments to a saga that’s at its finest on the pages of the book - the original inspiration for the movies- “Ring” by Koji Suzuki.

Bonnie Morgan doing Samara's signature crawl.

As far as watching this in theatres goes, if I wasn’t treated to see this movie by my super kind rockstar friend Sid (xoxoxo!!!) , I suggest waiting and catching this when the DVD release comes out and popping it on before Halloween. Instead, if you want to catch a well-paced, strongly-cast and down right hair-raising thriller/horror movie that’s currently playing in theatres see Split with Anya Taylor Joy and James McAvoy. Or, catch the far superior thriller/horror Don’t Breathe available on DVD for some crazy disturbing moments you just cannot unsee, and one of the most genuinely terrifying antagonists (the blind veteran) in horror films in the past decade.