Rings (2017 film)

Rings (known in Japan as The Ring: Rebirth) is a 2017 American supernatural psychological horror film directed by F. Javier Gutiérrez, written by David Loucka, Jacob Aaron Estes and Akiva Goldsman and starring Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Aimee Teegarden, Bonnie Morgan and Vincent D'Onofrio. It is the third installment in The Ring film series, following the previous installments The Ring (2002) and The Ring Two (2005), and is based on elements of Spiral by Kôji Suzuki.

Principal photography began on March 23, 2015, in Atlanta. The film was released in the United States on February 3, 2017. The film has a 7% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes and grossed $83million worldwide against its $25million budget.

Plot
On an airplane bound for Seattle, a man reveals that he has watched Samara Morgan's cursed videotape. Another passenger reveals she has seen the tape too, and asks the man if he made a copy. After learning he did not, Samara causes the airplane to crash.

Two years later, college professor Gabriel Brown buys a VCR, discovering the videotape inside. Elsewhere, student Julia sees her boyfriend Holt off to college but grows concerned when he falls out of contact. She is inspired to find him when a panicked girl, Skye, contacts her, asking for Holt's whereabouts. Julia meets Gabriel and finds a group of people known as the Sevens, who are involved in an experiment involving the cursed video. The group film themselves watching the video before passing the footage to another person, called a "tail".

Julia recognizes the panicked girl, Skye, who takes her to her apartment to have her watch the video, but Holt warns her not to. Julia locks herself in the bathroom as Samara kills Skye. Holt reveals that he has watched the tape as well and has twelve hours left. Julia watches his copy and when she picks up the phone, she experiences a vision of a door. The phone burns a mark on her hand. Holt's version of the video cannot be copied and contains additional images of a mysterious woman: she realizes they must cremate Samara's physical remains.

Gabriel sends them to Sacrament Valley, where Samara was given a proper burial after the residents of Moesko Island refused to accept the remains. He realizes the mark on Julia's hand is Braille, translates it, and goes to warn them. Julia and Holt find an unmarked tomb, but when they break in, they find it empty. They are caught and taken to a blind man named Galen Burke, who claims Samara's body was entombed by the local priest but a flood came, leading the priest to bury her in a potter's field outside town.

Heading for the field, Julia and Holt are stopped due to a car crash and learn Gabriel was involved. He tries to warn Julia of his discovery but is killed by a falling utility pole. After experiencing a vision of Samara's mother Evelyn, Julia and Holt return to town. Julia goes to the church and discovers a hidden chamber beneath the bell tower, finding evidence that Evelyn was imprisoned there while pregnant, held in captivity by the priest after being raped before she escaped eight months into the pregnancy.

Julia visits Burke and explains her findings. He attacks her, revealing he is the priest as well as Samara's biological father, having blinded himself to escape the reach of her powers. Julia pushes him down the stairs, temporarily incapacitating him. Holt rushes to Burke's house, where he is knocked unconscious. Julia discovers Samara's skeleton behind a wall, and Burke tries to strangle her to prevent her from cremating Samara's remains. He claims the cremation would unleash an unspeakable evil upon the world, and that he has killed several people who previously attempted to do the same. Suddenly, a swarm of cicadas fly in, summoning Samara through Julia's phone. Samara removes Burke's blindness and kills him. Holt recovers and rushes to Julia's aid. That night, he and Julia cremate Samara’s corpse, in an attempt to appease her spirit once and for all, and return home.

While Julia is in the shower, Holt notices a voicemail from Gabriel, who warns him of the Braille, which Holt begins to translate. In the bathroom, Julia peels away the skin where the mark was, revealing grey skin underneath. She begins to cough up black hair, from which a cicada is born. Meanwhile, Julia's copy of the cursed video is sent to everyone on her contact list, which becomes viral, despite Holt's futile attempts to disconnect the computer. As his computer glitches, the Braille translation is revealed to be "rebirth", as Samara is successfully reborn in Julia, seeing Samara's face in her mirror instead of her own.

Cast

 * Matilda Lutz as Julia
 * Alex Roe as Holt Anthony
 * Johnny Galecki as Gabriel Brown
 * Vincent D'Onofrio as Galen Burke
 * Aimee Teegarden as Skye Johnston
 * Bonnie Morgan as Samara Morgan
 * Daveigh Chase and Kelly Stables as Samara Morgan (flashback)
 * Chuck David Willis as Blue
 * Patrick R. Walker as Jamal
 * Zach Roerig as Carter
 * Laura Slade Wiggins as Faith
 * Lizzie Brocheré as Kelly
 * Karen Ceesay as Flight Attendant
 * Dave Blamy as First Officer
 * Michael E. Sanders as Pilot
 * Randall Taylor as Holt's Father
 * Drew Grey as Sam
 * Kayli Carter as Evelyn Borden
 * Jill Jane Clements as Karen Styx
 * Adam Fristoe as Chris
 * Rick Baker as Vendor

Production
In 2014, Paramount Pictures announced the initially titled The Ring 3D, with F. Javier Gutiérrez directing. In August 2014, Paramount was in talks with Akiva Goldsman to write a third draft of the screenplay, which had previously been worked on by David Loucka and Jacob Aaron Estes. In November, Gutiérrez posted an Instagram photo that showed that the title of the sequel had been changed to Rings. On January 16, 2015, Matilda Lutz was cast in the lead role. Alex Roe was cast as the male lead on March 20, 2015. Aimee Teegarden joined the cast on March 27, 2015, and Johnny Galecki signed on to star in the film on April 1, 2015, playing Gabriel, a professor who mentors and helps both Holt and Julia.

Filming
Principal photography on the film began on March 23, 2015, in Atlanta, and wrapped on May 31, 2015. Reshoots took place in July 2016.

Post-production
Post-production began in June 2015 at Paramount Studios and was concluded in November 2016.

Release
Paramount Pictures originally set the film for a November 13, 2015, release, but in September 2015, the film was pulled from the schedule, and in October 2015, Paramount rescheduled the release date to April 1, 2016. On February 17, 2016, the film was rescheduled for release on October 28, 2016, to take the place of Paramount's previous October horror release staple, the Paranormal Activity series, which ended in 2015 with Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension. On September 22, 2016, the film was delayed to February 3, 2017, most likely to avoid competition with Ouija: Origin of Evil, leaving the latter as the only horror film that debuted around Halloween 2016.

Marketing
The film's first trailer was released on August 24, 2016. The second trailer was released on January 5, 2017, alongside a new international trailer, containing new footage. In January 2017, Paramount released a prank video where an actress dressed as Samara jumped out of a television to scare unwitting patrons at an electronics store. The video garnered 200million views in 24 hours on Facebook.

Home media
Rings was released on digital HD on April 21 and on Blu-ray and DVD on May 2, 2017. The digital HD and Blu-ray releases include behind-the-scenes interviews with the cast & crew, deleted/extended scenes, and an extended ending.

Box office
Rings grossed $27.8million in the United States and Canada and $55.3million in other territories for a worldwide total of $83.1million, against a production budget of $25million.

In North America, the film was released alongside The Space Between Us and The Comedian, and is projected to gross $12–14million from about 3,000 theaters in its opening weekend. It made $800,000 from its Thursday night previews. It went on to open to $13million, finishing second at the box office behind fellow horror film Split.

Critical response
On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 7% based on 97 reviews and an average rating of 3.2/10, becoming the worst rated film of the trilogy. The site's critical consensus reads, "Rings may offer ardent fans of the franchise a few threadbare thrills, but for everyone else, it may feel like an endless loop of muddled mythology and rehashed plot points." On Metacritic, the film has a score of 25 out of 100 based on 23 critics, indicating "generally unfavorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C–" on an A+ to F scale, lower than the B– and C+ earned by its respective predecessors.

Alex Gilyadov of IGN gave the film a score 4.5/10, stating that it "opts for lazy jump scares and a convoluted origins story no one asked for or needed", though not dismissing that it has "some chilling scenes and creepy visuals". Peter Travers of Rolling Stone gave the movie zero stars and called it a "botch job" that suffers from "demo-worthy awfulness in directing, writing and acting". Peter Sobczynski of RogerEbert.com gave a single star, calling it "More wearying than frightening". A.A. Dowd of The A.V. Club commented that the film was a pale imitation of the 2002 American remake in terms of visuals and plot structure. He also dismissed the film's characters as "bland of nothings", citing their lack of development in the story.

On the positive side, some critics applauded the film out of the US. Mike McCahill of The Guardian commented that the film "smoothly reinvents the wheel" and "the director has fun with the franchise’s organising visual conceit and handles the setpieces with quiet aplomb", pointing that "the admirably loopy finale, involving blind Vincent d'Onofrio's swarming army of cicadas, is worthy of one of the better Exorcist sequels". Javier Jimenez Montoya of Vavel also praised the film stating that "it's a step forward in the horror genre" and applauded "its strong, surprising ending".

The negative critical reception in the US, along with its lower-than-expected US box office intake, was partially blamed by some critics and fans for the cancellation of Paramount's newest installment of the Friday the 13th franchise.

Sequel
Speaking at CinemaCon, Paramount Vice Chairman Rob Moore said that should the film prove successful, more sequels could recur annually, taking the place of Paramount's Paranormal Activity series. These plans were left in doubt following Moore's departure from the company. In a post-release interview, Moore's successor, Megan Colligan, said that "time will tell" if another sequel is on the cards. Following Colligan's departure, there has been no update on a sequel.