The video is back–and it’s taking lives again. However, this time the cycle isn’t perpetuating itself. Gabriel (Johnny Galecki), a college professor, decides to take it upon himself and his students to investigate this murderous film by having one student after another watch the film–potentially saving the previous viewer’s life, but putting everyone’s life at stake. Rings finds Julia (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) struggling to save the life of the people around her, including her boyfriend–Holt (Alex Roe). The clock is ticking and nothing is working in their favor.
Rings tries to make the story of Samara (Bonnie Morgan) bigger than before–allowing the curse to grow beyond Rachel (Naomi Watts) and Aidan (David Dorfman). The issue with this is, however, that viewers who have followed this story since its American inception in 2002 and have become connected and somewhat dedicated to those characters. This causes viewers to struggle to find an interest in the new characters and the larger story. The Ring was intimate, and viewers cared about what happened to Rachel and Noah (Martin Henderson), and as the story transitioned into what viewers saw in The Ring Two they were subjected to Dorfman’s Aidan–a horrifically frustrating character–but they were still able to remain connected to Rachel. Here, in the third installment, Rings loses its luster as the characters–Gabriel, Julia, and Holt, with the exception of their aesthetics–are nearly impossible to appreciate.
In reality The Ring Two wasn’t a bad film, but the fact that I had to deal with nearly two hours worth of Aidan (plus the significant issues regarding special effects), I was turned off to the film. I was hoping that Rings would allow the franchise to redeem itself–and to a degree it did, but not enough to make the film worthwhile. Even though I struggled to appreciate Aidan in the previous film, there was still an established understanding of what he meant to the film’s protagonist–Rachel, meaning that I was able to find at least a slight connection to the character. The new characters, the ones introduced here in Rings are unestablished, unconvincing (in terms of the characters not the acting), and altogether unenjoyable. Director F. Javier Gutiérrez fails to create something tangible in terms of the characters, and the film struggles as a result.
What does allow Rings to develop nicely and flourish to a degree is the fact that they’ve altered the story of Samara and the tape ever so slightly in order to allow it to fit the narrative of this new film. The tape and the aforementioned villain begin to fight back in new ways, and they work together to stop the “die in seven days” loophole present in the previous two installments. On the surface viewers might assume that this negates all that went into the previous films, but it actually manages to strengthen those prior narratives. Understanding now how mischievous and daunting Samara actually is adds to the level of horror that exists not just in Rings, but in its predecessors as well. Again, I’m sure that this new twist will frustrate some fans of the franchise up to this point, but I find it to be a welcome addition to the series.
There’s a back-and-forth struggle that exists within Rings as there are aspects that I enjoy and others that I can’t stand. The characters are necessary to the plot, but they are unrelatable and difficult to connect with–causing aspects of the film, including anything having to do with emotion, to fail. On the other hand, however, exists the new addition to the journey and the story of Samara. The two clash with one another, ultimately causing moments in the film to become a jumbled, uninteresting mess. Rings finds ways to outshine its predecessor, but in other ways fails to live up to all that viewers have come to love about the franchise; as a result Rings lands parallel to The Ring Two, somewhere in the realm of unnecessary in the grand scheme of the story.
Directed by F. Javier Gutiérrez.
Written by David Louka, Jacob Estes, Akiva Goldsman, and Kôji Suzuki.
Starring Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Vincent D’Onofrio, Aimee Teegarden, Bonnie Morgan, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐½/10
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