[Review] Rings

"This is gonna sound crazy, but have you ever heard about the videotape that kills you after you watch it?" - An actual line from the first few minutes of Rings, an abysmal new horror film that's supposed to be some sort of extension of the American version of The Ring franchise.

The shoddy plot revolves around said videotape, as a couple of personality-less college students and their irksomely useless professor attempt to solve the deadly mystery.

Rings is too on-the-nose, too trite, too ill-conceived, and too dull to be scary. Toward the beginning there's a pan across an estate sale that features a prominent shot of Alien and Jurassic Park VHS tapes, almost as if the film is laughably trying to suggest that it's in the same realm. And for whatever reason, there's even a pointless scene where an insect crawls out of a joint that some guy is smoking--maybe you have to be high to appreciate it. Between the film's utter lack of intrigue and thrill, the whole thing just turns into a muddled cycle of "Who Cares?" Even the title is uninspired.

I'm not saying the people in this movie are bad actors, but the characters they play are painfully bland. I got the impression that a set of cardboard cutouts could generate more amusement. The script contains some dialogue that is so bad that it hurts your ears, along with some visuals that are so corny that they hurt your eyes. It's as if the movie itself is its own cursed incarnation of awfulness.

Where is The Bye Bye Man when you need him?

( 3.5/10 )

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