**Spoiler Alert**
I am going to be honest I was not a fan of the original The Rings (2002) which was itself a remake of the 1998 Japanese film. The whole concept of watching a video then getting a personal phone call from a creepy girl called Samara to me just seems ludicrous. Yes I know the horror genre is full of equally unbelievable phenomena, but for some reason these films just don't work, at least not for me. With that out of the way let's delve into my review of Rings.
Rings begins in quite a different manner to how I thought it might, that is it opens with an aircraft in flight and a male passenger who has watched the cursed video tape. The year is 2013, you would think she might have upgraded to at least DVD by now? Samara of course does her manifestation trick and comes out of the small screens provided to watch in flight movies (Hopefully they were watching a better movie than this one) Samara of course crashes the plane. Fast forward to 2015 and Leonard from Big Bang Theory is of course a college professor. I am being facetious but this movie deserves derision. Gabriel (Leonard) watches the cursed tape and is inspired to conduct an experiment using his students as Guinea pigs in an attempt to discover and prove the existence of a human soul. Into this already mixed up movie is the stereotypical young romantic couple who, I think you can guess, go and watch the video. The rest of the movie plays out the twists and turns of their attempt to end the curse of Samara.
This is a mess of a movie, a hodgepodge of cliche, with a few predictable jump scares thrown in. Samara has the power to crash planes, and she can make electricity poles fall, almost as if lazy writing requires a way to advance the plot and that device is Samara and her supernatural super powers. We also get the origin story, a popular way to demystify your movie and make it even more bland and boring, like for example Alien: Covenant. On a technical level the cinematography is satisfactory with the occasional flourish. The acting is competent but not convincing. The special effects are of course a rehash of the Samara comes out of a television, but gives you a personal phone call first. To bring things a bit more up to date she rings your mobile and can hack your computer too. To be honest this movie felt more like a Final Destination movie to me, with a few Samara images we have seen before just to remind the viewer it is a ring movie.
Awful movie, 2 out of 10.
Summary: bland hodgepodge of a movie, Final Destination meets the Ring in an unnecessary backstory bore fest, avoid.