You can’t spell cringes without “Rings.”

This addition to “The Ring” and “The Ring 2” is why the sequel phenomenon in Hollywood needs to stop.

The premise of these movies is a deadly video that kills its viewers after seven days, and the only way to prevent your death is to make a copy and show someone else. The video was created when a young, powerful girl named Samara projected visions onto a VHS tape and died.

In “Rings,” a group of undergraduates tries to analyze this video to prove the afterlife exists. A faculty member selects students to watch the video for research purposes and continue making the copies so that they live, but the process is flawed and sets our main characters out on a mission to end the curse altogether.

Spoiler: they don’t.

The plot in this movie feels so exhausting by the end when all their attempts to stop the curse proved useless. The effects, particularly when the camera jump cuts and zooms in on a supposedly scary face, made me laugh out loud multiple times.

The majority of the jump scares in this movie were spent on idiotic scene transitions like a character opening an umbrella or a dog barking.

Everything about the main characters’ investigative process was spoonfed; they’re not particularly clever or compelling. They would stumble upon information, and ultimately did uncover the true reason behind the curse; yet with about a minute left of the runtime, Samara appears and says, “I’m sorry, but it won’t stop.”

With an open ending, I might say this leaves room for sequels, but the mystery is essentially solved. Nothing new or groundbreaking hit cinemas through this movie. Not even much entertainment value came out of it.

Like Samara’s cursed video, “Rings” was probably better left unwatched.

(0.5 / 5)