I decided to take a few days of from drinking this month, you know the whole “New Year, New Me” bullshit. I’ve been pretty good so far this week. I’ve been substituting vodka with cured meets and hard cheeses. So while my liver is having some relief, my heart, waist and chins aren’t. This hasn’t been particularly difficult but tonight is going to be my first real test. Watching RINGS while completely sober.
RINGS is the highly anticipated (said nobody) third installment in the American RING series. The first installment was a critical and fan fav that I was personally bored by. A not-so successful sequel followed a couple of years later and more than a decade later we’ve been gifted with a reboot. My expectations going in are pretty low considering the movie was originally scheduled for release in November 2015 but didn’t come out until Spring of 2017. It’s like the AMITYVILLE: AWAKENING of boring franchises. Anyway, I just opened a can of lemon LaCroix and a bag of pepperoni and Vermont white cheddar. Let the shit show begin:
- Okay, so the opening isn’t bad. Stupid. But not bad. But they killed off the cute guy way to quickly.
- Oh crap! Are these 2 skinny bitches going to be the lead characters? They’re already so bland. They’re like the leads in FINAL DESTINATION 4-bland.
- I never thought Johnny Galecki was hot. I may have to rethink some things. He looks like he drinks and talks shit about Jared Kushner. I’m in.
- So wait- there’s a whole club of college kids, with access to Wikipedia, YouTube, Google- basic info telling them about the video- and they watched the video anyway? Mmmmkay logic.
- So if you just make someone else watch the video then your curse is lifted? This is so fucking stupid. BTW- I just made a martini. Fuck this.
- Why is Vincent D’Onfrio in this? Doesn’t he have LAW & ORDER and ADVENTURES IN BABYSITTING money? Oh, he must’ve owed someone a favor.
- Okay, the lead bland guy is sorta cute. I’m not saying I have martini goggles, I’m just pointing out the obvious. And I have martini goggles.
- The lead girl watches the video even though she’s been advised not to? Did I just watch that right? I’m on my second martini so I might have missed something.
- This movie makes no sense.
- OMG! This girl I used to hate in high school just got married to the guy I hated in high school. I’m on Facebook at this point. It helps me escape the clutches of corporate horror movie franchises.
- So Samira was a neglected child. We all have our problems. (4th martini)
- I hope Samira kills them all!
- So he was her father?! And he blinded himself because… This is so fucking stupid.
- Why does the lead guy wear boxers? Has he never heard of boxer briefs?
- So the boring girl is now Samira (sorry, spoiler alert) and… wait- what? Ugh!
6 martini’s is my absolute limit- okay 7 but I’m not driving so who cares? In short, RINGS was too long, too boring and too stupid for words or a proper review. While the film looked visually pleasing it fell in the trap of horror movies from the pre-2015 era (basically anything that’s not GET OUT or starring Sir Tony Todd). The lead characters were too boring, too perfect and not at all engaging. Perhaps with edgier actors these characters could have been more fun. Also, it’s obvious there was a lot of studio interference. The script was all over the place and at times didn’t know if it wanted to be a RING movie or a FINAL DESTINATION movie. I suppose with the secret cult of people who watched the video and having their own Google operation to defeat it pulled the story in a new direction for further installments but this wasn’t the movie I watched. It’s too bad that this thing had more cuts that a turkey on Thanksgiving. For what it’s worth, the direction seemed fine but since the film was hacked to bits it’s hard to praise it. Let’s put it this way… this movie made me drink again after 10, 9, 6 days.
This movie gets a 
(*) out of 4 ****
I Need You Jesse 