Rings (2017)
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 First, you watch it. Then, you die.
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Rings (known in Japan as The Ring: Rebirth and The Ring 3 in Latin America) is a 2017 American supernatural horror film directed by F. Javier Gutiérrez, written by David Loucka, Jacob Aaron Estes, and Akiva Goldsman, and starring Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Aimee Teegarden, Bonnie Morgan, and Vincent D'Onofrio. It is the third installment in The Ring series, following the previous installments The Ring (2002) and The Ring Two (2005), and is based on elements of Spiral by Koji Suzuki.
Paramount Pictures had initially planned a third film, originally titled The Ring 3D, in early 2014, with Gutiérrez signed to direct the film from a screenplay written by Goldsman, Loucka, and Aaron Estes. Principal photography began on March 23, 2015, in Atlanta, and wrapped on May 31, 2015. Reshoots took place in July 2016.
Rings was released in the United States on February 3, 2017, and opened #2 at the box office. Despite being critically panned, it grossed $83 million worldwide against its $25 million budget.
Plot
A young woman (Matilda Lutz) becomes worried about her boyfriend (Alex Roe) when he explores a dark subculture surrounding a mysterious videotape said to kill the watcher seven days after he has viewed it. She sacrifices herself to save her boyfriend and in doing so, makes a horrifying discovery: there is a movie within the movie that no one has ever seen before.
Production
Development
In 2014, Paramount Pictures announced the originally titled The Ring 3D, with F. Javier Gutiérrez directing.[1] In August 2014, Paramount was in talks with Akiva Goldsman to write a third draft of the screenplay, which had previously been worked on by David Loucka and Jacob Aaron Estes.[2] In November, Gutiérrez posted an Instagram photo that showed that the title of the sequel had been changed to Rings.
Casting
On January 16, 2015, Matilda Lutz was cast in the lead role. Alex Roe was cast as the male lead on March 20, 2015. Aimee Teegarden joined the cast on March 27, 2015, and Johnny Galecki signed on to star in the film on April 1, 2015, playing Gabriel, a professor who mentors and helps both Holt and Julia.
Filming
Principal photography on the film began on March 23, 2015, in Atlanta, and wrapped on May 31, 2015. Reshoots took place in July 2016.
Post-production
Post-production began in June 2015 and was concluded in November 2016.
Why You'll Die After Watching This Movie
- It is way less faithful to the original American movie.
- The film has no idea if it wants to be a sequel or a reboot.
- The scares are very obnoxious, with cheap jump-scares (come on, seriously!?), even worse than Ring 2.
- None of these characters are likable and well-developed in the slightest, and in the film's first lines is the guy saying "Oh, so I watched this videotape" like these characters clearly only exist to die.
- Like with the last movie, most people act like Rings doesn't exist, and instead treat the short film (also called Rings) as the true sequel to the original.
- The trailers made it seem as if the plot of the movie was about the ring video becoming a viral phenomenon, with people everywhere watching the video and dying, and the main characters having to race against time to stop the spread of the ring video before it is too late, and everyone dies.
- What is happening with Rachel and Aiden at this time? Or any of the other survivors from the previous films?
- The idea of a group of people studying and experimenting with the video has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, practically none of that potential is used.
- The plot is just a literary rehash of the first two movies, again.
- Samara is no longer an intimidating presence, but a laugh riot with how zombie-like she appears to be, where she was a great villain.
- The whole cultist videotape group that films themselves watching the cursed VHS tape is just perplexing, to begin with; it comes down to "Why?". It makes no sense really, and the whole film leaves a distasteful afterthought in your head.
Redeeming Qualities
- Good soundtrack.
Reception
Rings received extremely negative reviews. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 8% based on 113 reviews and an average rating of 3.30/10. The site's critical consensus reads, "Rings may offer ardent fans of the franchise a few threadbare thrills, but for everyone else, it may feel like an endless loop of muddled mythology and rehashed plot points.". On Metacritic, the film has a score of 25 out of 100 based on 23 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C–" on an A+ to F scale, lower than the B– and C+ earned by its respective predecessors.
The generally negative critical reception in the US, along with its lower-than-expected US box office intake, was partially blamed by some critics and fans for the cancellation of Paramount's newest installment of the Friday the 13th franchise.
The final numbers at the global box office pushed Paramount to consider making another film in The Ring Franchise.
Videos
Trivia
- Paramount Pictures originally set the film for a November 13, 2015, release, but in September 2015, the film was pulled from the schedule, and in October 2015, Paramount rescheduled the release date to April 1, 2016. On February 17, 2016, the film was rescheduled for release on October 28, 2016, to take the place of Paramount's previous October horror release staple, the Paranormal Activity series, which ended in 2015 with Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. On September 22, 2016, the film was delayed to February 3, 2017, most likely to avoid competition with Ouija: Origin of Evil, leaving the latter as the only horror film that debuted around Halloween 2016.
- In January 2017, Paramount released a prank video where an actress dressed as Samara jumped out of television to scare unwitting patrons at an electronics store. The video garnered 200 million views in 24 hours on Facebook.