By Cristian Martinez
The story of “The Ring” that we all know and love has actually been around longer than thought; back in 1998 the first Ring movie was made in Japan based off of a novel created by Koji Suzuki about the legend of Samara, originally called “Ring.” It wasn’t until 2001 that the movie started to become an American tale and the horrors of Samara came to our screens. The latest edition to the “Rings” movie series has put a newer spin to the series, and even offers a solution to the curse.
The plot of the Ring series is that if someone had discovered and watched the cursed video, that person would be haunted by an evil presence in the tape, a young girl named Samara. After one has watched the cursed film, they receive a call over a land-line phone; once the call is answered a mysterious voice says “seven days.” Next, the person is injured by a mysterious burn that melts the handle of the phone and brands the victim’s hand. Everything seems fine after that, except for the fact that the countdown begins after the brand, and there is no known way to stop it; after day seven, the victim dies by “freak accident.”
In “Rings” there is a girl by the name of Julia, looking for her boyfriend Holt. Upon digging she finds that he was doing an extra credit project for his chemistry teacher; she goes to talk with the professor and he claims to have no clue as to the man’s whereabouts, and tells Julia that he might have grown tired of her and moved on. Julia gets suspicious and follows the professor to an elevator, and sees that he travels to the 7th floor of the building; Julia hears a commotion farther in the hall and finds that there is a secret society of students under this professor’s guidance that not only watch the film over and over again, but also attempt to decode it, and figure out what the purpose of the film is and why it is able to kill people who watch it.
The ending of “Rings” was very cliché and quite noticeable about half way through; aside from that, the story was very well planned and the plot had quite a few major twists and turns in it. Sadly, the movie did not recreate the horror the previous movies used to bring and felt more as though it belonged in the suspense or thriller genre. Also, the movie had set up many areas to climax to jump scares to keep viewers interested in the film, but sadly failed to deliver that. “Rings” deserves a 7/10 rating based on three main elements: acting, plot, and a psychologically thrilling story to keep the viewer relatively satisfied and wondering if there will be another addition to the “Rings” saga.
