Rings

Originally an American remake in 2002 of a more highly successful 1998 Japanese film, Ringu, about Samara, a ghost girl dumped in a well who arises to seek revenge on anyone who watches her spooky VHS tape. A haunted VHS tape has obviously run its course, so Rings now refers to cell phone rings or a circular pattern that keeps showing up in a high school girl’s visions. As we meet Julia (Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz) she’s saying goodbye to her boyfriend Holt who’s leaving to go off to college. (Yeah, we’re older and know that trick never works!!) So after her messages go unanswered, she heads off to locate him in collegetown and find out why he’s incommunicado! That’s when the only good idea in the movie occurs: seems a pot-smoking hip college professor has found a VHS with the Samara “watch me” tape and as we already know, for the curse to be removed, someone else has to watch the damned thing, so, he assigns it as mandatory viewing for class! Why does it seem that Hollywood believes every one of these mediocre horror movies need to be re-invented for a next generation? And why add in some sort of psychic phenomenon and an explanation as to why Samara (an evil ghost as originally envisioned) is actually a sympathetic abused figure???? Hated it!

[PG-13]