UK Film Review
- Feb 11, 2021
- 3 min read

Rings (2017) film review

★★

Directed by: F. Javier Gutiérrez

Written by: David Loucka, Jacob Estes, Akiva Goldsman

Starring: Matilda Anna Ingrid, Alex Roe Bonnie Morgan and Johnny Galecki

Film Review by: Rachel Pullen

Rings Film Review

Ah, college, a place where you go and party, get laid, maybe learn something and get into an unnecessary amount of debt with the hopeful promise that you might one day land a good job…also you can get involved in some kind of weird after school class whereby you watch a tape that kills you in 7 days…I think I would prefer the chess club.

Rings movie poster

But hey without it, how would Samara not carry on terrorizing innocent folks who watch her tape just because she had a bad childhood? Come on now, didn’t we all? You don’t see me killing a bunch of sexy teens…well not with a videotape anyway.

Rings tells the tale of a college professor who, upon finding the tape and learning of Samara’s legend, devises a system whereby he can monitor several students as they undergo the torment of the 7 days leading up to their death, and then at the last minute play it to the next student…making a ring of people, get it? Ahh, Hollywood must have stayed up late thinking of that one.

But when one strapping young lad gets involved in these after school activities and goes MIA, his girlfriend is having none of it and looks to put a stop to the whole affair, and guess what they do…..of course you know, they dig into Samara’s backstory and follow a bunch of clues in order to lift the curse….just like the other 2 movies….just…like …the ….2 …other …movies.

Now, I could bang on about how this is essentially the same story just with a different backdrop, but hey, we know that, so there is no point being mad about it, but for a kid who had a short life and died before she was like 10 or something, Samara has a hella long back story…three movies worth in fact.

This time the star of the show is Samara’s real dad who was a rapist priest [that joke is too easy] and after hearing about her revenge, made himself blind so she cannot kill him, I mean, that’s pretty clever.

He is lame, the teens follow clues, they fight blind big daddy, samara leaves wet everywhere, the end…that’s pretty much it, and sure I could not be surprised because any time a horror film has instalment after instalment, they always seem to suck but seeing as this film was made 10 years since the last one, you would have thought that the writers had the time to develop ideas fresher than just delving into Samara’s back story.

Now, I’m not going to be a complete Debbie Downer, I will admit the addition of the college and the creepy professor’s programme to study the tape, is kinda cool, but for a segment that’s only maybe one-third of the film, I feel they could have created something a little bit more.

But the plus that comes with making a film 10 years after the last instalment is, of course, the progression of CGI.

Samara looks fucking chilling and way more realistic, the effects used when the helpless folks are being tormented by the tape are beautiful, subtle and well-constructed, once again the film looks amazing, displays Samara’s presence with authority yet grace, but goddamn they lack a good storyline.

So, we are at the end, cool…things were wet, TVs were menacing, wells littered the countryside, people in Hollywood put no thought into sequels. Rings provides more pages to the tale of Samara’s life, but as a movie brings nothing new to the table, nothing to write home about [or to the well depending on your upbringing] and so, as we come to the end, what have we learned?