Fans of 2002’s The Ring Should Skip This Installment and Watch The Original Instead
Director: F Javier Guiterrez
Starring: Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Aimee Teegarden, Bonnie Morgan and Vincent D’Onofrio
Studio: Paramount Pictures
Rated: 14A
Running Time: 1 Hr, 42 Mins
If Hollywood insists on resurrecting dormant properties or franchises from years past, it needs to start trying harder. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes it yields blockbusting results. You don’t have to look any further than 2015’s Jurassic World, last summer’s Finding Dory or the current crop of Star Wars movies to see how successful nostalgia movies can be. But lately it seems that the price tag for every one Hollywood puts in the win column is a dozen failures.
And you can put Rings in the second category.
Video: Paramount Pictures
Shortly after her boyfriend Holt (Alex Roe) goes off to college, Julia (Matilda Lutz) begins to suspect that something has either happened to her paramour or that their relationship has become a casualty of distance. Unanswered texts and a creepy late night Skype call from a clearly unhinged stranger cement her concerns and prompts her to go hunting for answers.
It’s then that she discovers Holt has become wrapped up with an unorthodox study into a deadly curse that spreads through viewing a macabre video (you know the story). But the study soon spirals out of control and the resulting fallout forces Julia and Holt into a race against time to unravel the mystery of the video before Julia’s seven days are up and she meets Samara, the curse’s demonic grim reaper.
Rings suffers from two problems. The first is that it fails to realize it’s own potential. One reasons why The Ring worked so well in 2002 was that it was new. Despite being an Americanized remake of an originally Japanese concept, it was a breath of fresh air for Western audiences. While Rings offers a new (and modern) take on the idea, it quickly discards any new ideas in favour of putting Julia on a quest search for answers we’ve already seen. Rings merely rehashes storytelling ground that was covered back in 2002.
There were probably half a dozen avenues it could have explored based on its premise that would have offered a new take on the franchise. The idea of an academic study into the curse was far more interesting than the direction the movie chose to go.
The second flaw is that Rings ignores what made the original great (Rings essentially ignores the 2005 sequel). Other than the novel idea, the other secret to The Ring’s success work was Naomi Watts as the lead. Watts she singlehandedly provided the movie’s entire emotional pillar. She convincingly sold her character’s strength and vulnerability, her determination and her desperation. As viewers, we became emotionally invested in Watts and her fate. Successfully establishing an empathic link between the audience and the characters is the only thing that makes a horror movie work. We saw an example of that recently with James McAvoy selling Split, but there’s no such anchor or crutch in Rings.
At first you find yourself doubting Julia’s ability to be a hunter, but as the movie progresses, you simply can’t buy her as the counterbalance to the demonic Samara. Worse, you can’t really bring yourself to care what happens to her. Lutz simply lacks that kind of gravity and screen presence.
Johnny Galecki’s Professor Gabriel flips from self involved and arrogant to being a trustworthy ally in the blink of any eye (with no explanation). Like the story’s original premise, his character was worth further exploration instead of simply being discarded. Vincent D’Onofrio tries to add some gravitas the same way he did with the original Sinister, but even he can’t salvage Rings’ inability to bridge the gap between the audience and the characters.
I was a fan of the original and was hoping Rings had something new to offer, but instead it settles for an uninteresting story, pale characters that can’t summon anything resembling emotional investment and gets mired in common horror tropes (like people going out of their way to do stupid things).
Take it from me, give Rings a pass and stick with the original.
Image: Paramount Pictures
