We’re Still Scared

‘RINGS’ TRAILER REVIEW

In a follow up to The Ring and The Ring 2, this third installment follows the legend of a video that is said to kill the viewer within seven days. This time around, we follow Julia, who tries to find the secret to the video in order to save herself and her boyfriend. While we’re not sure how this will stack up against the sheer terror of the original, we’re mostly too traumatized by the first film to consider this one.

Rings opens in wide release Feb. 3.

NICOLE: Oh hell no, I’m not watching this. It took me literally hours to garner the courage to sit through the full trailer, and I had to queue up a video of Anna Akana’s cats trying kitty strollers. I have tried to block The Ring from my memory — same with The Grudge.

JAIMIE: Ah, memories. I watched a late-night showing of The Ring when I was in high school and it is one of the fondest memories I have. So much screaming, so many sleepless nights afterward. I made myself watch it a couple time again after, but it was still pretty scary. I can’t even put my finger on why, because other scary movies like The Exorcist were not as eerie as this one.

CHRISTINA: I also watched The Ring in high school — and was fully traumatized by it. I also can’t quite put my finger on exactly why it is so eerie, but I just found it very unnerving. I think it was something about the way that the girl moves and crawls out of the TV. Just the visuals are very disturbing.

However, from this trailer, this one kind of looks less disturbing, maybe because parts of it look kind of overdone.

NICOLE: I thought it was funny how the girl had to rip the TV off of the wall. Samara would have fallen out of the TV onto the floor otherwise, right? And then her hand popped out from the screen, and I jumped. And now I’m done. Everyone else can carry on with this review.

PAIGE: I like that they thought to modernize the original VHS tape with a YouTube video, but then the lady somehow still has a landline phone. And not just a landline, but a very old-fashioned landline. What, Samara can’t call your cell? We didn’t think this through!

JAIMIE: If nothing else, this movie serves as a sad reminder that Hollywood truly is lacking in originality right now. Like, first of all, the Japanese did it first. Second, it doesn’t even look better than the first one and doesn’t seem to expand on anything — other than that plane scene, which seemed a bit much. It made the movie feel much less scary than the first one, for sure.

PAIGE: You can’t really hate on America for trying to cash in on the series, though. There are so many Ring spinoffs and sequels in Japan that I think their current thing is a Sadako vs. Kayoko film, aka The Ring vs. The Grudge crossover. (The ending of that involves them fusing into one monstrous entity and apparently killing everyone.) It’s a big franchise there. It’s literally the eighth film. In comparison, we only have our modest little trilogy now.