Once you see it, you hate it

Why the fuck does this movie exist? I’ve tried to tone down my cursing lately, but I’m not going to even hide my displeasure with this nonsense. The trailer looked like ass, the movie involves no one of quality, and it got pushed back from a Halloween release to Super Bowl weekend because the studio knew it had nothing. And as bad as it is, it’s not even an entertaining failure, it just annoys the shit out of you with every passing second. Now come on, you might say, how could a sequel to The Ring (2002) be so bad? Well first off, it’s a second sequel; and secondly, nothing about this film works even on a conceptual level. To find out what I mean, let’s dive in.

Quick refresher in case you forgot the general premise in the 15 years since the last movie: a little girl has cursed a VHS tape so that anyone who sees it dies in 7 days unless the person can make a copy and show someone else the tape. So our film starts with a pointless airplane crash caused by every one’s favorite dead girl living in a television set…before cutting to a college biology professor (Johnny Galecki) who gets a hold of an old VHS tape that gives him the curse of The Ring. So yeah, that airplane scene in the trailer? Has no effect on the plot, and none of the characters in this scene are related in any way to the main characters of the story which are played by Matilda Lutz (Italian model acting in her first American production) and Alex Roe (Hunky Boy B from The 5th Wave). Anyways, these two non-emoting dimwits get roped up in the curse of the Ring when Lutz’s character agrees to see the video in order to save her dumb shit of a boyfriend. However, ends up coming across something different in her experience pointing at a “bigger” mystery.

I put “bigger” into quotation marks because the mystery is one that does not freaking matter. Actually, it’s pointless to discuss a plot because this film has no freaking story, it’s a sequence of events that have the loosest possible connection to each other. Further, each event is cavalcade of idiocy that I have not witnessed in a horror film since Paranormal Activity 4. None of the developments of this film make any damn sense. Our main character gets roped up in the curse of the Ring because her boyfriend was taking a college class that studies the video…

Correct, we have whole swathes of people studying the effects of the Ring video as each student watches the video with a partner to tag out so that each will be able to survive the seven days. Now this is an interesting angle to take the original concept, and approach it as an action movie in the vein of Aliens from Alien (hell I’m sure that why they decided to pluralize the title of this movie to make such a connection). However, this whole scene of students analyzing Samara Morgan’s video was just a pointless distraction because Holt (Alex Roe) ends up going AWOL from the project which causes problems for another student for…some reason that the film didn’t bother to go into. Anyways, Holt’s bizarre absence (which is never explained) is what spurs Julia (Matilda Lutz) to go and find him which leads her to discovering what the video can do to someone if they don’t make a copy and show the video to someone else.

Anyways, because Julia sucks, and is in “wuv” with her boyfriend, she opts to sacrifice herself and watch the video to inherit the curse. However, for a reason that is never explained, her copy of the video is longer than anyone else’s copy with new footage (Director’s Cuts are all the rage thanks to DC Movies). Now these extra scenes provide clues into the past of Samara Morgan…a past that we must now delve into because reasons. Why the hell doesn’t she just show her new video to another person and let that person deal with the stress of the curse instead of putting her Inspector Clousseau hat on to solve a mystery? No goddamn reason, the studio is copying the hard hitting journalism storyline from the first film.

But that first movie involved Naomi Watts investigating the cause of death of her niece, and she seeks out the source of the video to hopefully find a cure. The cure she finds is only stumbled upon with the whole copy mechanism. It made sense why Naomi Watts was doing what she was doing. Here, a new mystery arises just for no freaking reason at all and we’re supposed to be invested in a tale to uncover where Samara herself came from. But given the fact The Ring Two already went down this path (to find nothing of value ultimately), what you essentially have is a retcon of the birth of our monster who’s not even the omnipresent threat she posed in the first damn film. Hell, you forget all about Samara since she’s barely in the movie and no one seems to be concerned with the threat she poses to the world.

This giraffe jizz is just an excuse to shoehorn Vincent D’Onofrio in to this movie to embarrass him as a blind wise man who gives a big ass exposition dump that offers nothing new or interesting to the lore of The Ring. Hell, besides the go nowhere plot, this horror movie barely features any horror at all. The first film was instantly recognizable thanks to its off putting video while giving you some disturbing imagery throughout the ordeal to keep you in suspense as to what the hell is happening. But this film doesn’t even bother with that, this movie only tries to sneak in three jump scares in its hour and forty minute run time and the filmmakers only did it because I’m sure the studio forced them to do it.

What kills me is that the last act of the film is a straight up ripoff of another horror film from 2o16, Don’t Breathe. You get a scary blind man chasing kids around a house and you even get a repeat of the really messed up scene from that movie (trigger is “turkey baster”). And this is done without a hint of irony. Hell, I’m sure the first portion of the movie dealing with the class gave me a strong flashback to It Follows, which itself copied The Ring‘s premise of a virus that must be spread before it can kill you. Only It Follows was using its monster to make a horror flick out of an STD, Rings does nothing at all the concept of a viral monster. Hell, in the age of digital entertainment and spreading media through the Internet, you’d think that’s the avenue the film wanted to go…but nah, let’s make a rehash of the first movie, that will get the filmmakers some cash, the bastards.

Goddamn, nothing in the film worked. The plot is idiotic, there is a complete absence of scares, the script doesn’t make any sense, and the actors…oh shit I forgot to mention how terrible they’re all in this. This girl Lutz has a lot of work to do if she really wants to pursue an acting career as opposed to modeling because by God she delivered all of her lines like a goddamn robot. And Alex Roe is once again a thirty year old man playing an 18-year-old, and this shit film expects you to just buy it. Well, when he’s acting like a piece of wood, he’s doing no favors for himself. Only Johnny Galecki (Leonard from The Big Bang Theory) walks away with a tiny bit of his dignity intact as I initially didn’t recognize him and he truly felt like he was trying to make sense out of this idiocy. But the director (unknown dude that I don’t want to hear from again) failed him miserably. And Vincent D’Onoforio’s character has an exit that is just plain stupid.

However, the stupidity of this film trembles before the might of the moronic piece of shit that is the last three minutes of this picture. Not only are scenes from the damn trailer in these last precious seconds, but the film introduces another new concept right out of its ass with no buildup or setup for. It’s presented as a shocking twist, that is neither shocking nor feels like a twist. What you ultimately find is a complete waste of your time and money.

And that is why SOME’ OL BULLSHIT is too good of a rating for this movie. I’m sorry, but when something pisses me off THIS much? There’s only one rating to give it, and that is the the return of the one, the only…

FUCK THIS MOVIE