Rings (2017) Review

Time: 102 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence and horror scenes
Cast:
Matilda Lutz as Julia
Alex Roe as Holt Anthony
Johnny Galecki as Gabriel Brown
Aimee Teegarden as Skye Johnston
Vincent D’Onofrio as Galen Burke
Bonnie Morgan as Samara Morgan
Director: F. Javier Gutiérrez

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.

I reviewed The Ring a while ago, it was a very solid horror movie which actually was a very intriguing mystery that didn’t resort to cheap scares like a lot of horror movies do. I never saw The Ring Two but from what I heard it wasn’t very good. 15 years after the first film was released comes Rings, which looked like a way to bring back a well known horror property to make money. It also didn’t look very good. And Rings was pretty what I expected, a mediocre, boring and jumpscare filled movie which really falls flat.

It turns out you don’t really need to watch the previous Ring movies, Rings almost feels like a soft reboot. The early scenes of Rings are absolutely dreadfully bad, like terrible. Notable is the very first scene which takes place on a plane, it feels so out of place, the dialogue is terrible, everything is so over the top. That whole segment was dreadful. Fortunately the rest of the movie isn’t in that level of quality but it’s still pretty bad. The movie is actually more mystery based and on paper that doesn’t sound too bad, Verbinski’s Ring was more of a mystery movie to me. However not only is the mystery aspect uninteresting, it feels like its trying to be a horror movie with all these random jumpscares. The worldbuilding that the movie does is unnecessary and nothing really all that great. The movie is so unengaging, so mediocre that it’s hard to care about anything that’s going on. On another note, the trailer not only spoiled a lot of the movie and featured some scenes that didn’t appear at all in the final film, it downright lied about the direction of the story. So if you want to for whatever reason watch Rings, don’t watch the trailers.

If you remember my review for The Ring, you’ll remember that I thought one of the weak points was the characters, they just weren’t given enough depth or development. The characters in Rings make the characters in The Ring look 4 dimensional, there is not one thing I remember about any of the characters, they just do things in the movie to move the plot forward but lacked any strong personality or character. The acting is mediocre from pretty much everyone, though I can’t imagine anyone being able to do a good job with this material. The only person who particularly stands out is Vincent D’Onofrio, who is the best part of the movie but is not in the movie much. Nevertheless he gives it his all.

The Ring was so well directed by Gore Verbinski, giving it such a creeping and uneasy feeling. Even when nothing particularly scary was going on, the tone was constant. The direction for Rings on the other hand is not good, more along the lines of a typical mediocre horror movie, which is what Rings is. It doesn’t know how to establish any form of atmosphere, we are just watching events take place without feeling anything. Also unlike the original Ring, there are plenty of jump scares, none of them being effective in the slightest. The CGI is also pretty fake looking.

Rings was just what I expected, a poor and mediocre attempt at a horror movie. The characters are flat, the story is uninteresting, the scares don’t work, it’s just not good at all. I have seen worse horror movies, it just felt below average and lackluster. Even if you liked the original Ring, you probably won’t like this.

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The 5th Wave (2016) Review

Time: 112 Minutes
Age Rating: Violence & offensive language
Cast:
Chloë Grace Moretz as Cassie Sullivan
Nick Robinson as Ben Parish/ “Zombie”
Ron Livingston as Oliver Sullivan
Maggie Siff as Lisa Sullivan
Alex Roe as Evan Walker
Maria Bello as Sergeant Reznik
Maika Monroe as Ringer
Zackary Arthur as Sam Sullivan
Liev Schreiber as Colonel Vosch
Director: J. Blakeson

The human race stands on the brink of extinction as a series of alien attacks decimate the planet, causing earthquakes, tsunamis and disease. Separated from her family, Ohio teenager Cassie Sullivan (Chloë Grace Moretz) will do whatever it takes to reunite with her brother Sam. Fate leads her to form an alliance with Evan Walker (Alex Roe), a mysterious young man who may be her last hope. Forced to trust each other, Cassie and Evan fight for survival during the fifth assault from the invaders.

The 5th Wave is yet another Young Adult novel adaptation and as I predicted, it wasn’t really good. It definitely had potential with some of the cast and the premise but all of that is wasted. The film is full of generic characters, a boring story, weak plot points, and plenty of dated YA clichés. Which is unfortunate, because this film could’ve actually been good.

This film has an interesting premise. However most of the potential is wasted. The start of the movie wasn’t great but it wasn’t as terrible as I thought it would be. There was too much narration and exposition, but it above what I expected it to be. And then at a point, over time the movie just got worse and worse. This movie is a typical generic YA Adaptation, with things like love triangles thrown in for some reason. This movie is also kind of boring, there’s not much to get invested in, the characters are bland and 2 dimensional, the story is not investing, it’s hard to care about what’s going on. Many elements of the film are also underdeveloped, like the aliens, their motivation for attacking Earth isn’t that touched upon. Also, the way the film ended was rather underwhelming. I guess they are trying to set up sequels (hopefully they won’t actually happen).

Chloe Grace Moretz in the past has shown that she is very talented. Here though she really doesn’t have much to work with. Her character, like everyone else, doesn’t have much characterisation and feel very basic and simple. And yes, there is a romance, this being between her and Alex Roe’s character. I’ll just say that out of all the YA novel adaptations that exist, this has got to be up there with one of the worst romances. There’s also sort of a love triangle that is set up with them and Nick Robinson’s character, which would probably continue into the next films (if they actually happen). The thing is that the characters are so poorly written that really no one in this movie looks good. Not even Liev Schreiber gets a chance to be good, he ended up being this generic army guy, saying and doing very clichés things.

As for the direction, it’s nothing special. The special effects aren’t really anything unique, it’s fine, really nothing great, nothing bad but also not very memorable. The way the third act ended was underwhelming and a part of that is the action sequences, they weren’t anything all that spectacular. They weren’t horrendous but you don’t really end up feeling that tense (though its probably because the writing doesn’t give you much to care about).

I have no idea how accurate the movie is to the books but on it’s own, The 5th Wave is yet another failed YA Adaptation which wastes its potential, talent and premise. This movie tries to set up sequels and but I’m not sure if that will actually happen, given that most people really didn’t like this movie. It might be entertaining for some of the action scenes and just how clichéd and crazy some of the decisions were, but aside from that, this movie is not worth watching really.