The Definitive Guide to Living in the Capital , Cairo , Egypt

The reason behind the resurrection of the infamous Samara in F. Javier Gutierrez’s Rings is a mystery. Scripted by a horde of somewhat inexperienced writers, there’s very little creativity, freshness or novelty in what is a flimsy script, leaving Rings as nothing but desperate cash-grab.

The story is centred on Julia (Lutz); a young teenager who is sad to see her boyfriend, Holt (Roe) heading off to college. Promising to keep their love alive through regular Skype calls, their long-distance relationship soon comes to a grinding halt when Holt seemingly disappears. Desperate to find out what has happened to him, Julia decides to travel down to the campus in order to investigate.

Meeting his biology professor, Gabriel (Galecki) and Holt’s classmate, Skye (Teegarden), Julia soon learns that Holt – who is alive and relatively well – has become tangled in an experiment involving a mysterious VHS tape, featuring the dark magic of a girl called Samara.  After witnessing first-hand what the act of watching the tape does to people around her, Julia, who also soon gets exposed to the tape, pairs up with Holt in order to find a way to save themselves and eventually stop Samara from spreading death for good.

The story was last revisited back in 2005 in Hideo Nakata’s The Ring Two and as far as everyone was concerned, the story of Samara and all of the myths surrounding her, was laid to rest right then and there.  However, twelve years later, the franchise has resurfaced and although die-hard fans of the original won’t be too displeased with the end-result, the rest will find very little to engage them.

From the terrible pacing – the movie feels a lot longer than it actually is – to the ridiculous screenplay which fails to engage the audience and suck them into its premise, the production’s problems are aplenty.  The film attempts to set-up a ticking clock in that Julia learns that she will be killed seven days after she ends up watching the tape, but then fails to effectively use it as a device. The performances are equally dreadful with the romantic chemistry between the two leads – supposedly the beating heart of the story – failing to ignite the necessary sparks – or any for that matter.

All in all, Rings is one big ball of unnecessary mess. Lacking suspense, heart and the necessary terror – watching Samara crawl her way out of a screen just doesn’t do the trick anymore – there is absolutely nothing here that you haven’t seen before.