'Rings' Review

Julia (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) starts to think that her boyfriend Holt (Alex Roe) is in danger as he doesn't return her messages and another girl skypes her asking where he is. Holt has become a part of a dark subculture surrounding a mysterious videotape that kills the viewer seven days after watching it. Julia joins to save her boyfriend but it is soon realised that there is a film within the film that nobody has ever seen before that will unleash even more terror.

If you make a horror and the film simply is not scary, creepy or tense, you have failed to make a good horror movie. If you make a movie in general and it isn't interesting or entertaining, then you have failed to even make a decent film. With a genre like horror, you at least expect it to be fun if it fails to be scary. With 'Rings', it is very plain and unfortunately boring.

'Rings' brings a new tale of a college syndicate being created around watching the tape from the previous films that ends up killing you after 7 days. That alone is fairly absurd as you question why anybody would sign up but I'll give it its due. We are introduced to Jonny Galecki's character Gabriel, who looks to use the tape to prove the dark side of the afterlife. The story then follows a mystery surrounding the history of the tape and of the girl featured in the tape, Samara. Although the film does look to expand the lore of this horror character, it ultimately leads to the film becoming very, very boring. Our lead characters become sucked into finding what the truth is about Samara and how they can free her troubled soul. Due to this, the film doesn't make Samara seem like that much of a threat as she doesn't really do anything to the main characters as they seem to be looking to help her. The film can't decide what it wants to do as it jumps back and forth between horror and mystery. When it does so, it completely neglects the other, leaving both the horror and mystery to be half-hearted and not executed well at all.

In all honesty, there really isn't anything that memorable within this horror movie. The film doesn't offer anything new or exciting but it also isn't as bad as the likes of 'The Bye Bye Man'. That's perhaps the problem with 'Rings', there simply isn't anything worthwhile in the film. With horror, you usually get something creepy or something that is laughable. 'Rings' doesn't deliver either of these or anything for that matter. The story doesn't help as it is fairly complicated and doesn't really make much sense. The storyline of finding out more about Samara takes up most of the screentime. This doesn't leave much room for their to be many scares and if so, they are predictable jump scares.

To be fair to the cast involved, they do a fairly good job despite the script making them very basic standard characters. The characters are fairly disposable but the performances do enough to keep this from becoming a total disaster. Matilda Lutz does well as the lead in the film and doesn't fall victim to stupid character tropes or to overacting. Jonny Galecki is also fine, providing a believable intellect for the protagonists but not as much of the badass that he is made out to be. Vincent D'Onofrio was a surprise to see in the film as well. D'Onfrio like the others isn't giving much interesting material to work with but he brings a solid performance nonetheless.

It's hard to completely discredit this film for its failures. Unlike many others, the film does seem to try and add to the lore of it villain. Was it executed well? No. But it wasn't just a rehash of what had already been done. You can't accuse 'Rings' of being a lazy horror film, which it so easily could've been. In saying that, though, the fact that nothing really happens is its ultimate downfall, making 'Rings' a film you should probably stay away from.

Final Verdict = 

So have you seen 'Rings'? If so, what did you think of the film? I hope that this review was useful for if you were planning on seeing the film or not. Once again, thank you for taking the time to read my review, it is much appreciated!

By Angus McGregor