Rings movie review & film summary (2017)

The conceit of “The Ring” saga, if you somehow managed to forget it, concerns the existence of an unmarked videotape that contains a short surreal film that is supposed to be indescribably eerie but which looks more like a runner-up title at a lesser underground film festival. For most people, sitting through something like that would be torture enough, but immediately after viewing, you get a phone call with the voice of a little girl saying “Seven Days” and if you don’t make a copy of the video and get someone else to watch it in that time, you die a hideous death. It is all connected to a girl named Samara who lived a sad life, died violently and whose spirit haunts the video. She now haunts those who watch it and has a tendency to climb out of television screens in order to claim her victims. Yes, I know how silly this all sounds but trust me, it was considered to be scary stuff back in the day.

This time around, the story centers on a couple of adorable “teenagers”—Holt (Alex Roe) and Julia (Matilda Lutz)—who are separating. He's going off to college, she's staying at home to care for her sick mother. They promise to stay in contact, but when Holt seems to vanish, Julia drives up to the college to find out what is going on. After getting the brush-off from his favorite teacher, Professor Gabriel (Johnny Galecki), Julia gets suspicious and follows him to a campus building where Gabriel and a number of students are trying to unlock the secrets of the tape by watching it and studying its effects, always taking care to have someone else view the tape as well to keep them safe. Considering that the facilities look more like a trying-too-hard club than anything else, what with the mood lighting and hipster vibe, I would love to see how Gabriel managed to get his budget approved.

Once Julia ends up watching the video herself in order to temporarily save Holt after Gabriel’s program inevitably goes sideways, the two of them go off on yet another journey to uncover the secrets behind Samara, in the hope of bringing her peace and saving their skins in the process. This time around, they journey to a near-ghost town, where her remains were supposedly buried 12 years earlier and where a popular local girl went missing 30 years earlier. The couple also manage to discover that Julia’s copy of the video seems to contain an additional video within it featuring strange new footage that corresponds with the weird hallucinations she is now having—yes, Samara’s haunted movie of the damned now has an extended director’s cut! Further intrigue comes in the form of Vincent D’Onofrio, who plays a blind caretaker who supplies the kids with some important details.

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