🎞️ Rings (2017)
📲 From Cursed VHS to Digital Dumbassery

Let’s start with the trailer. It won’t help, but hey — tradition:

🎥 Rings Official Trailer (2017)

—

Yes we’re not reviewing the original sequel, why? Because I said so that’s why. Also after watching this film, I refuse to touch that other sequel.

🔍 Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

Set years after the events of The Ring, this sequel-slash-reboot-slash-tech-support-nightmare follows a college professor who somehow acquires the cursed tape and builds an entire ghost science club around it. No, really. Meanwhile, our main couple — Julia and Holt — get sucked into Samara’s “newly upgraded” curse, where the tape is now digitized and going viral. Because the one thing this franchise needed… was buffering.


—

👥 Character Rundown

Julia (Matilda Lutz): A discount horror final girl who stares a lot. That’s her personality.

Holt (Alex Roe): Boyfriend material with the charisma of wet cardboard.

Gabriel (Johnny Galecki): A professor who builds a Samara fan club disguised as a research lab. Should’ve been cursed for existing.

Samara Morgan (Boneless Wi-Fi Demon): Now in HD! Spreads herself online like a haunted cat meme. Somehow still relies on VHS though.

Vincent D’Onofrio: Wasted in this movie. Deserved better.



—

✅ Pros

It ends. This film has a beginning, a middle and a end. That’s the only compliment I can give it.



—

❌ Cons

Everything else.

Samara is now… streaming?

Still wants people to burn VHS tapes??

Julia somehow sees “new footage” in the cursed tape, like Samara edited a bonus scene just for her.

They try to build lore. It fails.

The movie thinks it’s smarter than it is.

And yes everyone else is still stupid, no one considers going out in the woods and hiding in a cabin with no electronics!



—

🧠 Final Thoughts

This movie is stupid. There’s no sugarcoating it. The very concept is dumb. It tries to modernize the curse by making it “go viral,” but doesn’t bother to update the rules. So the internet exists now — cool! That means Samara is basically working overtime. You haunted ONE VHS tape before. Now you’re haunting every Dropbox, DMs, college servers, and Facebook groups?

How is she keeping up with that workload? Is she unionized now? Does she have ghost interns?

Also — explain this to me like I’m five. You go digital, but you still need people to make VHS copies? Why!? That’s like emailing someone a document and demanding they fax it to someone else or you’ll kill them. If you’re cursed via email, then it should be email-forwardable. Not burned to physical obsolete plastic rectangles no one owns anymore. You baffling specter.

And Julia? She’s somehow chosen by Samara and sees “extra footage” — implying this ghost has editing software now. Samara’s out here with Final Cut Pro, adding deleted scenes just for dramatic flair.

As I’d she’s creating the Samara Cut, #releasethesamaracut.

Girl, get a hobby.

Also… the ending. Julia’s body starts decaying with Samara’s skin. Guess what? Samara’s not spreading anymore. She’s reincarnating. Into Julia. Because… franchise bait. And the film has the audacity to cut to black like it just dropped the hottest twist in horror history.


—

⭐ Rating

3/10 – This movie is what happens when someone says, “What if The Ring, but YouTube?” and then falls asleep halfway through writing it. Samara deserves better. You deserve better. Everyone deserves better.

This is a horrible film, granted I never cared about this franchise in the first place.


—

🚨 Spoiler Warning


—

💻 Spoilers

The film opens with a dude on a plane who watched the tape seven days ago. Samara crashes the plane. We never revisit that storyline. It was just there to make the trailer look cool. Welcome to Rings.

Cut to years later: a professor (Johnny Galecki) buys a cursed VCR at a garage sale. He watches the tape, realizes it’s real, and does what any rational adult would do — forms a secret ghost club at a university. He has students watch the tape, then “tail” each other like horror chain letters. He’s also a creep, but that’s the least of the film’s sins.

Enter Julia, who discovers her boyfriend Holt is involved in this digital exorcism cult. She watches the tape to save him and gets marked. But then… she sees new footage. Samara chooses her. Samara starts sending her ghost Snapchats that no one else can see. The tape has been patched like a video game update.

Eventually, Julia and Holt track down Samara’s origin town and meet a blind man (Vincent D’Onofrio) who spoiler alert is actually her secret birth father. And guess what? He’s been keeping her secret locked away… until he decides to kill Julia for “getting too close.” He gets what’s coming — Samara shows up, murders him, because copyright.

Then the twist: Julia’s been chosen not to be haunted… but to become the new vessel. Her skin starts peeling. Her reflection flickers. The curse has rebooted — new file name: “ring-virus-2.0.exe.”

Roll credits. Franchise dead.