Her curse only takes seven days to work its deadly magic, but it’s been over ten years since Samara was last seen on the big screen in the American version of the Ring franchise. That all changes with the release of Rings this weekend, and while it does share the same name as Jonathan Liebesman’s 2005 short film that bridges the gap between The Ring and The Ring Two, it doesn’t share its predecessor’s ability to get under your skin.
The Ring Two was released in March of 2005, and a lot has changed in the nearly 12 intervening years between then and now, especially with technology. While mobile connectivity was becoming more commonplace in ’05 (when flip phones were seemingly multiplying overnight like rabbits in the summertime), the concept of being constantly “plugged in” was vastly different than today’s screen-centric culture. Thanks to smartphones, laptops, and even virtual reality headsets, video is no longer confined to its corner in the living room—it comes with us everywhere we go. And in the world of The Ring, that’s a beautiful thing for Samara, who uses the screen to stalk and mutilate her victims after their seven days are up—the price they pay for watching the cursed tape.
Despite its multiple release date delays, Rings is still very much cemented in a world where the latest technology is at the fingertips of its characters. Unless they isolate themselves completely from technology, there should be no escape from Samara and plenty of chances to scare viewers. The movie makes this point early on when one of Samara's victims is sweating it out over 20,000 feet above ground on an airplane. The seats in front of every passenger have a screen, and it’s not long before a familiar well takes over as the in-flight movie (hey, at least it’s free of charge). It’s Samara on a Plane, and she’s ready to take advantage of every square inch of screen space—even in the cockpit—to get her prey. Unfortunately, this ambitious opening (which, unlike the rest of the movie, runs too short) is one of the few times the abundance of screens in today’s society is utilized, and it’s a missed opportunity in a film that spends a lot of time on more mundane inquiries into Samara’s backstory.
Rings has plenty of time and opportunities to make this a welcome return for the franchise. And if, like me, you absolutely adore Liebesman’s short film Rings (which is an official part of the franchise’s canon), then you’ll actually find a lot to love about the film’s first act. Much like Liebesman’s Rings, the feature film version introduces an underground culture obsessed with watching The Tape to experience its mind-altering effects before passing the video on to someone else (aka “a tail”) to avoid a grisly death. It’s the ultimate high, and the looming possibility of death only adds to the adrenaline rush.
The only problem is that your tail can bail, leaving you to greet Samara on the seventh day. The stress of finding someone to be your tail can lead to plenty of paranoia and backstabbing among fanatics of The Tape (just watch poor Jake Pierce’s story in 2005’s Rings), so a feature-length exploration of group mentality, trust, and betrayal under the shadow of Samara seemed like a natural direction to take the story in Rings. And while the first act embraces the horrors and the highs of this Samara subculture, the screenplay abandons its ripe possibilities before you can even finish the first half of your Raisinets.
I’m all for a narrative shift when it makes sense, but where this film goes in its final two-thirds is deep into territory that feels decidedly unlike a Ring movie. Characters try to uncover why Samara is killing from beyond the grave (making the movie feel like more of a reboot than a sequel, as we’ve been down this backstory road in some capacity before), but Samara herself is largely absent. The black-haired beauty from below is the face of the franchise, but there are long stretches of time in the film’s second half that show no indication of her even being in the film.
Much like the recent The Bye-Bye Man, viewers are treated to some effective Nightmare on Elm Street-esque hallucinations while waiting for something to happen, but the lack of the main villain is baffling, especially since Bonnie Morgan is back as Samara to work her contortionist magic after performing the iconic spider crawl from The Ring Two. Samara’s presence alone doesn’t make or break the movie, but she’s sorely underutilized here (even in flashbacks, it feels like a lot of footage featuring Samara was cut out), and the dreamlike sequences and predictably timed jump scares don’t bring near enough horror in her place.
It’s far from a total loss when Samara is not on camera, though. Johnny Galecki as an unconventional professor and Vincent D’Onofrio as an enigmatic blind man are endlessly entertaining to watch, and director F. Javier Gutiérrez does a great job shooting the film with steady, ominous shots that let the horror do the talking. But those scares are few and far between, and at the end of the day, this is supposed to be the American Ring movie that fans have waited over a decade for (Sadako vs Kayako recently helped hold folks over in the meantime), and it just doesn’t live up to the inevitably high expectations set by a ten-plus-year wait.
Is there hope for the Ring franchise’s future? Does Samara have hair that would make Cousin Itt jealous? The answer is yes, and it will always be yes as technology continues to surround our every movement. There is still plenty of potential waiting to be unleashed in future installments, so long as Samara can truly be free to spider crawl through the digital age in all of her ghoulish glory. The final scene of Rings almost even makes up for its feet-dragging second half, with a clever twist that delivers the movie’s most surprising and horrifying moments. But when Rings feels like it’s just getting started right before the end credits roll, you can’t help but regret watching this tape in the first place.
Movie Score: 2/5
Raised on a steady diet of R.L. Stine’s Goosebumps books and Are You Afraid of the Dark?, Derek has been fascinated with fear since he first saw ForeverWare being used on an episode of Eerie, Indiana.
When he’s not writing about horror as the Senior News Reporter for Daily Dead, Derek can be found daydreaming about the Santa Carla Boardwalk from The Lost Boys or reading Stephen King and Brian Keene novels.
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