Salty Rice
Member
The trash just keeps coming.
Truely endless trash.
Truely endless trash.
-
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Reviews for Rings (2017) Currently at 0% on RT
- Thread starter digitalrelic
- Start date
- Status
March will be better
Stay away from Logan!
water_wendi
Water is not wet!
Is it worse than Ring Two?
brandonh83
Banned
Would beer help or is it just plain bad? Like is it at least ridiculously stupid enough to where you could laugh at it with some alcohol and people over, or just miserably boring?
AyaisMUsikWhore
Member
I definitely could of told Blu-Ray.com that synopsis but here we are. 🤷🏽*♀️🤷🏽*♀️
ThePrequelsSuck
Banned
Holy jesus.
hooligan690
Banned
GAF will rip on this movie and then create 300 new threads about the shitty superhero comics that rehash the literal same fucking plot over and over within the next week
Not saying this movie is good. Just saying that everyone on GAF is fucking retarded and reddit is a million times better. When is the last time this site was updated? 2002 called, it wants its shitty forum back
Not saying this movie is good. Just saying that everyone on GAF is fucking retarded and reddit is a million times better. When is the last time this site was updated? 2002 called, it wants its shitty forum back
Ow, the edge.
Lord Frieza
Member
Quick, we need to replicate this post everywhere so its disease can spread and we all be allowed to live
Gordon Shumway
Banned
I'm guessing for your next trick you're going to post a third time to reveal that Reddit is, in fact, better than NeoGAF..
sssstententen
Member
What is going on in this thread ahahaha.
Also its a shame, but I'll probably watch it anyway. Always thought the rings series was interesting, even with 2 being just blah.
Also its a shame, but I'll probably watch it anyway. Always thought the rings series was interesting, even with 2 being just blah.
On my way home. Loved it. I am truly the Cipher Peon of this movie. The prophecy has come true. Will post details when I get home.
First you post it. Then you die.
First you post it. Then you die.
HAAAHA!
It's really pretty impressive.
Dude had a full nerd meltdown calling other nerds "retards" because his nerdy thing is less nerdy than their nerdy thing.
This is real life.
At least most of these folks have the decency to fall on their swords in support of Trump. But Rings? Jesus that's sad.
Read the books.
On other news, can't wait to watch this, bring me the bad, can't be worse than both Sadako 3d. I absolutely love Sadako vs Kayako though.
Has Sadako grown up here? I don't get why americans think that children are so scary.
Sixfortyfive
He who pursues two rabbits gets two rabbits.
And we got 2 of them in such a short thread.
Gordon Shumway
Banned
I'll tell you..told dude he'd be back at Reddit soon in another thread. Never in my wildest dreams did I imagine he'd go nuclear in here lol. Troll game is weak..
GabeTheGrouch76
Member
I await your inevitable post on KIA about how unfair your banning was and how GAF is a bunch of SJWs who don't respect free speech.
Took me way too long to recognize where that's from. xD
old manatee
Banned
I'm with hooligan690. The new Ring movie looks fucking incredible, and GAF looks like the crack of my ass. You people make me sick.
CaviarMeths
Member
I'ma let you finish, but that guy in the "my wife had an idea for Nintendogs" thread had the greatest pointless edgy account suicide of all time.
Okay, so here's my manifesto. I was gonna say 'fuck it' and just write this tomorrow, but I've got so much to say and I'd hate to forget anything. I'll preface this by saying that I was on a real media high coming in to this-- Coleen had just won Celebrity Big Brother which I watched on the way over, and Wednesday Campanella performed on Music Station again. Today was good. I was ready.
I was not ready. As the movie started, it was surreal! I couldn't believe I was about to watch this. When the original American remake came out, I was in junior high. I'd gone with a group of friends to see it and sat on the edge of 5-6 tweens next to a particularly snarky friend of mine and was ready to gab through a cheesy horror flick. Snide comments quickly turned into praise. We both loved it. I was floored. Slept with the lights on that night, the whole nine yards. Before long, I'd gone back to see it a second time. I had never done this before and have never since. I downloaded a workprint copy of the film with unfinished VFX and implored everyone I knew to head out and watch it. Made my poor mum watch it. Participated in the viral marketing campaign which I took WAY too seriously. Watched the Japanese film. Helped some fan forums research the Japanese historical reference points of the original novel. Quickly, The Ring became my thing.
Then, talk of a sequel picked up. At the time it was alleged to be a 'prequel/midquel/sequel' hybrid and buzz around the treatment was very good. I'll cut to the chase and say that the end result was not good. I went to see it alone, wanting nothing to get between myself and The Ring Two. That was a fucking mistake. I remember waiting for my ride home afterwards and pacing outside of the theater. That's it? I was gutted. It sucked. But worse, it didn't want to suck. It took itself so seriously. The direction was rich and pointed, but shit. It was bad. Like, really bad. It made more at the box office than the original no doubt on positive word of mouth from the first (and its very good home video sales), but in doing so poisoned the well. Pun intended. Naomi Watts allegedly made it clear one way or another that she was moving on, and while David Dorfman was allegedly game for another, nobody seemed to want to take the reigns. The premise quickly became dated and nobody wanted to write a script about teens trying desperately to get the cash together in a week to buy a DVD recorder. I can imagine someone pitching, "Okay, so the sexy teen takes 'WATCH ME.mov' and renames it to 'Pamela Anderson Tommy Lee sex tape lil bow wow 911 truth.mov', makes the file public on Kazaa, and then waits. Magic, right? Oh, and in this world, RealPlayer doesn't buffer."
But then 3D films took off. And there was an opportunity there! 'What horror movies are ripe for a sequel? What can we milk?' Filesharing was more widespread than ever, so the dated premise had patched itself up. Problem solved! And so, it was. The Ring 3D. Until it wasn't. For whatever reason, and I'd love to hear the story behind this one day, it failed to materialize. Sat in development hell for years, until-- poof! F. Javier Gutierrez signed on to direct, and Akiva Goldsman was hired to pen what we now know to be the third rewrite of a script that'd been floating around for a while. The Ring 3D was filmed between March and May 2015, and test screenings took place later in the year. Impressions didn't take long to wind up on the internet. I'll have to hunt them down before the imdb boards are taken offline later this month, because it's easy to tell from what plot details were shared that the impressions were legit. And they were middling. 'It wasn't BAD, but it wasn't good' was the common sentiment. There was a lot of talk of the opening sequence and people from different test screenings reporting seeing different versions of it. Regardless, the film went back for some allegedly extensive reshoots more than a year later in July of 2016. Delay, delay, delay.
And then there I was. February 3rd. Sitting with a close friend and fellow Ring fan at the ScotiaBank Theatre here in Toronto. Opening night (sans Thursday preview screenings).
First of all, not 3D anymore. I don't know if there was like a Fant4stic situation where they dipped into the post-production budget to afford the reshoots and that meant axing the 3D conversion, or if perhaps it wasn't filmed in 3D at all. But yeah, not 3D. The Paramount logo is going, it flickers Ring tape-style. I'm pumped.
SPOILERS!! DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE GOING TO WATCH THIS MOVIE
I just clicked Preview Post and saw that this is already ABSURDLY long, like in the territory of longest GAF post I have ever seen, and I'm not even halfway through this damn movie, so I think I'm gonna take a break and finish up after some sleep.
I'll hint at the second part and say that
I was not ready. As the movie started, it was surreal! I couldn't believe I was about to watch this. When the original American remake came out, I was in junior high. I'd gone with a group of friends to see it and sat on the edge of 5-6 tweens next to a particularly snarky friend of mine and was ready to gab through a cheesy horror flick. Snide comments quickly turned into praise. We both loved it. I was floored. Slept with the lights on that night, the whole nine yards. Before long, I'd gone back to see it a second time. I had never done this before and have never since. I downloaded a workprint copy of the film with unfinished VFX and implored everyone I knew to head out and watch it. Made my poor mum watch it. Participated in the viral marketing campaign which I took WAY too seriously. Watched the Japanese film. Helped some fan forums research the Japanese historical reference points of the original novel. Quickly, The Ring became my thing.
Then, talk of a sequel picked up. At the time it was alleged to be a 'prequel/midquel/sequel' hybrid and buzz around the treatment was very good. I'll cut to the chase and say that the end result was not good. I went to see it alone, wanting nothing to get between myself and The Ring Two. That was a fucking mistake. I remember waiting for my ride home afterwards and pacing outside of the theater. That's it? I was gutted. It sucked. But worse, it didn't want to suck. It took itself so seriously. The direction was rich and pointed, but shit. It was bad. Like, really bad. It made more at the box office than the original no doubt on positive word of mouth from the first (and its very good home video sales), but in doing so poisoned the well. Pun intended. Naomi Watts allegedly made it clear one way or another that she was moving on, and while David Dorfman was allegedly game for another, nobody seemed to want to take the reigns. The premise quickly became dated and nobody wanted to write a script about teens trying desperately to get the cash together in a week to buy a DVD recorder. I can imagine someone pitching, "Okay, so the sexy teen takes 'WATCH ME.mov' and renames it to 'Pamela Anderson Tommy Lee sex tape lil bow wow 911 truth.mov', makes the file public on Kazaa, and then waits. Magic, right? Oh, and in this world, RealPlayer doesn't buffer."
But then 3D films took off. And there was an opportunity there! 'What horror movies are ripe for a sequel? What can we milk?' Filesharing was more widespread than ever, so the dated premise had patched itself up. Problem solved! And so, it was. The Ring 3D. Until it wasn't. For whatever reason, and I'd love to hear the story behind this one day, it failed to materialize. Sat in development hell for years, until-- poof! F. Javier Gutierrez signed on to direct, and Akiva Goldsman was hired to pen what we now know to be the third rewrite of a script that'd been floating around for a while. The Ring 3D was filmed between March and May 2015, and test screenings took place later in the year. Impressions didn't take long to wind up on the internet. I'll have to hunt them down before the imdb boards are taken offline later this month, because it's easy to tell from what plot details were shared that the impressions were legit. And they were middling. 'It wasn't BAD, but it wasn't good' was the common sentiment. There was a lot of talk of the opening sequence and people from different test screenings reporting seeing different versions of it. Regardless, the film went back for some allegedly extensive reshoots more than a year later in July of 2016. Delay, delay, delay.
And then there I was. February 3rd. Sitting with a close friend and fellow Ring fan at the ScotiaBank Theatre here in Toronto. Opening night (sans Thursday preview screenings).
First of all, not 3D anymore. I don't know if there was like a Fant4stic situation where they dipped into the post-production budget to afford the reshoots and that meant axing the 3D conversion, or if perhaps it wasn't filmed in 3D at all. But yeah, not 3D. The Paramount logo is going, it flickers Ring tape-style. I'm pumped.
SPOILERS!! DO NOT READ IF YOU ARE GOING TO WATCH THIS MOVIE
So, the opening sequence plays out with weird shades of the little web series spin-off from Fear the Walking Dead. This dude has seen the tape a couple minutes shy of a week ago and he must be thinking, "Heh, is shit gonna do down? No way, right?" but just in case, I guess he figures getting on a plane and endangering a hundred odd people is a good idea. So this random girl strikes up a conversation with him, and from the very first line you know this dialogue is gonna be SHIT. "Life sucks when you can't sleep, right?" So he unloads on her about the tape and she's like:
(btw it took me WAY too long to find that GIF so know that I am dedicated to this post)
So he dips off to the bathroom and she looks over to her friend and is like, "Ugh, that cute guy sitting beside us is a total head case. Started going on about a video that kills you when you watch it." Naturally, the friend responds, "...what tape?" SHE KNOWS. So the weirdly capable friend runs to the bathroom (she's the Michelle Ang character in this Fear the Walking Dead comparison btw) and confronts the cursed stranger. "DID YOU MAKE A COPY?!" "What?" "I SAID DID YOU MAKE A COPY?!" "Uh... no!" and at this point, the iconic well shot from the tape pops up on all the in-flight entertainment screens and on the display panel in the cockpit. Shit goes south, the plane starts to go down for some reason (I guess the auto-pilot isn't working because the screen is taken over??? I didn't get that part) and the cockpit door swings open and a cloud of flies pour out and it's classic Ring. The plane is starting to nosedive so cursed stranger and the weirdly capable friend hang on to the seats and dangle into the aisle. He looks up to her and there's a moment where you're thinking, "Is she gonna help him? How can she?" but she doesn't. In fact, Samara quickly pops out of the cockpit display (don't know why the well popped up on all the other screens when the one was enough but okay) and that's the scene. Done. I'm thinking... okay, that was inconsequential. Also, what happened? Just like a 3-second external shot of the plane going down to close off the scene would have given it way more closure. But evidently, there were more than a few variations of that scene so it doesn't surprise me that the end result seemed to lose focus.
Next, we're at a... like, yard sale thing? I must have missed the establishing shot because looking back, I didn't really catch where this was. Aimee Teegarden (of Friday Night Lights) is looking at a VCR, and Johnny Galecki (of Roseanne and The Big Bang Theory) chimes in to tell her "You know, there was a time when this was a revolutionary piece of technology" to which she responds, "But now it's just a piece of junk, isn't it?" Turns out this was the VCR of the cursed dude from the plane. Oh, and the plane went down.
And then they bang.
Night. He's back at his place tinkering with the VCR when a tape ejects (uh oh!) He says, "Hey, Skye! (of course her name is Skye btw) Come here and check this out! Looks like someone left a tape in here! Wanna watch it?" "I can't! I'm gonna be late for class," she says as she gets dressed (because they banged) "See you later, Professor." TWIST! He's her teacher. So she leaves, and he watches the tape. Gotta tell ya, it's been a while since I've seen pillarboxing in a blockbuster though I appreciated them not just cropping it. The phone rings. 'Unknown Number' you see on his android phone. That's one mythos mystery solved. "Seven days." "Who is this?" he asks before realizing the call has ended. I let out a sensible chuckle, realizing this was maybe the first time in the franchise someone spoke back to Samara. So he goes to smoke a cigarette, and a fly materializes inside of it and crawls out. This was very effective and very well done. The fly buzzes off to the window, and he follows it. He tries to squish it, and you see that the fly is now on the other side of the window. He's confused and stares out the window as the fly takes off out of sight. It's then that he and we notice the rain outside is raining up. It's pouring up his windows. Again, very well done and very effective. The camera pans out and you're allowed to really take in the sight. Cool as shit. Then the windows flash to an image from the tape. Not to Johnny Galecki, but to us. Fucking gratuitous. Turns into the logo. Didn't ruin the awesome moment and it starts to sink in that I'm watching a Ring movie in 2017. By the way, it is almost always raining in this movie.
So then we meet the real leads. Impossibly attractive sexy white teens. He's going off to his first day of college, so she sees him off. She says he smells nice as they embrace, and he OF COURSE takes his shirt off. He's told her the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, wherein she has died so he travels to the underworld to rescue her. As part of the deal to revive her, he would not be allowed to look back at her as they emerged from the underworld until they had returned fully to the world of the living. For some reason, he couldn't help himself, turned around to look at her, and she was cast back to the depths below. Cool story, right? "Don't turn around," one sexy teen says to another. So she walks down the suburban stretch as he drives away, smelling his shirt. This is already groanworthy, but what I found particularly weird is that he's shown from the shoulders up as he takes his shirt off, and as she's walking away he's out of focus. As he gets in the car, they show him from the shoulders up. You get very little of a look at him shirtless. And of course, he's got a crazy body. Why on Earth would you write a gratuitous shirtless scene for the male lead, and then hide him? Huh? Not that I'm here to see that, but it just felt like a symptom of a bigger problem with the movie. The writer seems to want one thing out of a scene, and the director seems to want another thing. Possibly, test audiences want a third thing and the final result is what was shot being shoehorned into that. Weird.
So now, he's been at college for a week or so and they're on Skype. Things start to get a little sexy, when two friends of his (both people of color who are never named) pop up out of nowhere (the first of many, many jump scares) and pull him away. This is supposed to be unsettling as the call cuts out mid-sentence. But this isn't before he drops a hint of 'remember this' in him thinking his biology teacher is badass. One guess who that teacher is.
Fast forward to... weeks later, I guess? He's stopped returning his calls and texts, and she's clearly worried. She falls asleep and wakes up to him on top of her. "Told you I'd make it up to you" he says as he starts to actually go down on her. He's holding her hand and then so is Samara! She doesn't seem to notice until he comes up for air and says, "Name!" By the way, I remember this movie beat by beat yet I actually forget their names and I think that's too funny to ignore. So he calls out to her, she looks down, and... he's there and it's normal? But there's a figure coming up from behind him and I guess she notices the extra hands and JUMP SCARE! She's awake and it's the middle of the night. As she's waking up, ring ring! Her laptop is on and she's getting a Skype call from him. Only, it's not him! "WHERE IS HE?!" screams Skye, whose face is distorted in that classic I-have-seven-days-to-live-please-watch-this-tape way. "I don't know!" "WELL, TELL HIM HE CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM ME!" "What's wrong with you?" This is presumably about the whole face distortion thing. Skye is belligerent. So the call ends and this is all She needs to hear. She hops in the car and off she goes to get to the bottom of this. I don't know why she didn't do this before when later events in the movie imply they're deeply in love and the earlier shot of her text messages to him implied he's been MIA for at least a week. But whatever.
So She gets there and by this time it's morning. She heads to his dorm room which of course is open and snoops. She takes a bracelet of his off the wall that I guess looks significant, sees his schedule and notes he's got a lecture from that badass biology teacher he mentioned (spoiler alert: it's Johnny Galecki), but not before hearing a text tone. She looks under his desk to find his phone. None of the calls or texts have been answered in a while and they've really stacked up. But She can't look for long because of course, the phone dies.
So off She goes to the lecture which is already in progress. Johnny Galecki is talking about souls and life after death, but it's cut off when he becomes distracted by Her and lets everyone out. "Go get drunk!" he says to his class and to me. As everyone is leaving, she spots the nameless friends of color. "Oh, you're the girlfriend." "Where is He?" "You shouldn't have come here." They leave. Unfazed, she approaches Johnny Galecki. "Can I help you with something?" "I'm looking for my boyfriend. Name McName. Have you seen him?" "I see a lot of people. Doesn't ring a bell." "Really? Because he told me about some extra credit project he was doing with you." "(flustered) ...You know, it's not unusual here that a freshman finds something, or someone, more interesting than college and takes off. My advice? Go home and move on." He collects his things and leaves but she's not far behind. She spots him going into an elevator and watches as the light above the entrance indicates he's going to the 7th floor. Get it? 7th floor? 7 days? Anyways.
The elevator won't start. Will not her go to the 7th floor. Unless! She takes out the key she swiped from the dorm room, uses it to effortlessly unlock the elevator, and up she goes to the 7th floor. She gets up there and it's a long hallway leading to a camcorder actively recording and some papers. She walks up, quickly inspects the camera, then looks at the papers. It's a bound copy of (the title escapes me but it was something like) "THE SAMARA THEORY: Life after death something something biology" She looks through it and the weirdest thing I've ever seen plays out on screen. What you're seeing is the camera footage of her in real time looking through this book, complete with overdone scanlines and shit to sell that it's this camera, but at the same time, overlaid on top of it is the book itself as she flips through it. But it's not like pages of it overlaid on the screen, it's footage of the book I guess shot from over her shoulder and the backdrop is cut out so that it's overlaid on the camera footage with the scanlines and shit, but the footage of the book has no such visual flair. It's fucking weird and dumb looking and unnecessary. Not weird is what's in the book: Everything the series mythos has established that people who are infected create-- scratched out faces in magazine clippings, random circles, you name it. So she puts the book back down, guess she's thinking like, "Huh, what a weird book" and continues down the hallway.
Inside? It's a damn speakeasy. There's people hanging out, a bunch of digital clocks on one wall counting down with names attached, and pictures of peoples' faces all distorted Ring-style, including Name McName which She notices. General Ring stuff abound. She tries to blend in and spots Skye confronting Johnny Galecki. She hides behind a conveniently-placed pillar and listens in. "Where's my tail?!" Skye yells. "He didn't show. We'll find you one. Everything will be okay!" Johnny Galecki says unconvincingly. "It's different this time, I'm telling you!" "That's what they all say." "No, it is! I can feel her! She wants to come back!" "Listen, we'll find someone. Where's Name McName?" "He's taken off! Nobody can find him! You have to get me a tail!" Galecki seems uninterested so Skye takes off. As Skye heads for the elevator, She pursues her, but is stopped in the hallway by one half of the nameless friends of color with two girls hanging off of him. "Honestly, I saw the tape and it like, wasn't even that scary!" he actually says before spotting Her. "Hey, you're not supposed to be here!" he yells. This obviously does nothing to stop Her and she never sees either friend again. She ends up in the parking lot and approaches Skye. "Oh, it's you." "I'm looking for Name. What's going on?" I'll take a quick pause here to say that this delivery from Her is SO UNBELIEVABLY BAD I actually choked on my drink and laughed out loud. I came to learn that the lead actress is Italian and speaks English as a second language. Really well, in fact! But boy, while she can very often hide the accent well (though certainly not always), her delivery is not at all in line with how native English speakers talk and it's extremely jarring and terrible. It sounds like I'm being overly negative on this point, but really, it is probably the worst thing about the whole movie. Anyways, there's a sparkle in Skye's eye. "I'll tell you everything, but I have to show you something first." Uh oh!
They're at Skye's apartment. Skye says, "Watch where you step. I just painted the ceiling." She looks up and sees an actually very cool painted rendition of the graphite circles people seem to draw when they're under the influence of the curse. Skye is scrambling on her laptop for like a weird amount of time considering she literally just has to click copy, then paste, then play. So she's in the zone on her laptop, and her phone vibrates. Skye doesn't hear it, but SHE does. She snoops through the phone and sees that the text is from Name McName. 'Yo new phone what up did you get that tail?' it basically said. She types back, 'NAME?? It's not Skye! It's She McShe!' He sends back a flurry of texts. 'SHE?? WHERE ARE YOU?? ARE YOU AT SKYE'S??' Skye speaks up, "Okay, so you just watch it and it's only 2 minutes and then we'll talk and everything will be cool. Okay? Okay?" Skye turns around and spots She with her phone. "IS THAT MY PHONE?!" She looks down to Skye's phone. Name McName texts again. 'DON'T WATCH!!!!!'
A struggle ensues. She manages to push Skye off, runs to the bathroom and locks the door. "Just watch it! It'll be fine!" Skye pounds at the door and pleads with her but it's not long before light appears from the living room. Uh oh. Time's up. Iconic well shot on the laptop. Skye pulls out the router and the laptop power but it doesn't stop. "It's not real!" she screams as she throws the laptop across the room. But then the well shot is on the TV. Skye furiously pulls at the cords behind the TV and then the TV itself, and it lands on the floor with a crash. Skye looks accomplished until the white noise pops back up and light appears to emanate from the unplugged and surely broken face down TV. Water pours from it and she looks defeated. Samara pushes the TV up by way of exiting it as it's face down and it's very cool looking and the sort of inventiveness I'd hope to see in a revisit to the franchise. The camera follows Samara as she stands up and the TV scratches down her back, but cuts exactly as the TV rolls off her butt and lands back on the floor with an audible thud. Samara does exactly the same quick teleport from the climax of the first film and just the same, Skye falls into furnishings behind her and crashes down. SHE is listening intently from the bathroom. Samara's face emerges from her hair and it cuts to HER in the bathroom as Skye's scream dies out and you can quickly hear what seems to be a combination of a shuffle and a chair scratching the floor. But Samara doesn't just dip out! Oh, no. She approaches the bathroom door and Julia (HER name is Julia, I just remembered) is terrified. The door handle turns slowly and when the door swings open, Samara is gone but the body of Skye is propped up in a chair in front of the TV facing away from Julia. So she runs to the door and scrambles to get out. But it's locked from the fucking inside because something something Skye is crazy. So anyways, she approaches the body and rifles through Skye's pocket until the hunched over body... damn, how do I word this? The motion of the pocket rifle is enough to push the limp, hunched over upper body back and expose Skye's twisted face (which looked MUCH better than the awful ones from The Ring Two) which for some reason makes like a bone shifty crunchy sound because why not. Julia I guess is already holding the key (and how deep is that damn pocket) so she screams and takes back off for the door. She unlocks the door and just as she does, TWIST! The door opens, and it's Holt! The sexy teen formerly known as Name McName whose name I just remembered.
So just to take a bit of a breather here, I LOVED that the body was propped up in the chair and the audio cue that it took place nigh instantly. The mystery of how bodies ended up in the position and spot they're ultimately found in was one of the creepier elements of the original, I always thought. They didn't have to do that. It was always an insignificant thing in the overall picture so I really appreciated it and it was fucking cool. Added to it immensely. Also, the effects work was fantastic and it dodged the worst part of the first film by not having the hair divide over Samara's face in such a way that you could tell the actress was holding and pulling the hair away herself in two clear pieces like so:
This was way more obvious when watching the movie and the GIF might not portray what I mean so clearly as there's definitely a couple frames where you can see the hair get closer together before it's pulled away as if it's being grabbed at that moment. But I digress. Additionally, I thought Samara sticking around after the kill was a cute aftershock of that original Ring Two treatment wherein one midquel sequence takes place in the opening of the first film and shows the perspective of the friend as the niece is killed which she hears and is then approached by Samara. Considering the first film implied 'The rules are different now! She's free!' it didn't seem like Samara made a habit of extracurricular appearances outside of harassing Rachel and Aidan so that was very cool and I loved it.
(btw it took me WAY too long to find that GIF so know that I am dedicated to this post)
So he dips off to the bathroom and she looks over to her friend and is like, "Ugh, that cute guy sitting beside us is a total head case. Started going on about a video that kills you when you watch it." Naturally, the friend responds, "...what tape?" SHE KNOWS. So the weirdly capable friend runs to the bathroom (she's the Michelle Ang character in this Fear the Walking Dead comparison btw) and confronts the cursed stranger. "DID YOU MAKE A COPY?!" "What?" "I SAID DID YOU MAKE A COPY?!" "Uh... no!" and at this point, the iconic well shot from the tape pops up on all the in-flight entertainment screens and on the display panel in the cockpit. Shit goes south, the plane starts to go down for some reason (I guess the auto-pilot isn't working because the screen is taken over??? I didn't get that part) and the cockpit door swings open and a cloud of flies pour out and it's classic Ring. The plane is starting to nosedive so cursed stranger and the weirdly capable friend hang on to the seats and dangle into the aisle. He looks up to her and there's a moment where you're thinking, "Is she gonna help him? How can she?" but she doesn't. In fact, Samara quickly pops out of the cockpit display (don't know why the well popped up on all the other screens when the one was enough but okay) and that's the scene. Done. I'm thinking... okay, that was inconsequential. Also, what happened? Just like a 3-second external shot of the plane going down to close off the scene would have given it way more closure. But evidently, there were more than a few variations of that scene so it doesn't surprise me that the end result seemed to lose focus.
Next, we're at a... like, yard sale thing? I must have missed the establishing shot because looking back, I didn't really catch where this was. Aimee Teegarden (of Friday Night Lights) is looking at a VCR, and Johnny Galecki (of Roseanne and The Big Bang Theory) chimes in to tell her "You know, there was a time when this was a revolutionary piece of technology" to which she responds, "But now it's just a piece of junk, isn't it?" Turns out this was the VCR of the cursed dude from the plane. Oh, and the plane went down.
And then they bang.
Night. He's back at his place tinkering with the VCR when a tape ejects (uh oh!) He says, "Hey, Skye! (of course her name is Skye btw) Come here and check this out! Looks like someone left a tape in here! Wanna watch it?" "I can't! I'm gonna be late for class," she says as she gets dressed (because they banged) "See you later, Professor." TWIST! He's her teacher. So she leaves, and he watches the tape. Gotta tell ya, it's been a while since I've seen pillarboxing in a blockbuster though I appreciated them not just cropping it. The phone rings. 'Unknown Number' you see on his android phone. That's one mythos mystery solved. "Seven days." "Who is this?" he asks before realizing the call has ended. I let out a sensible chuckle, realizing this was maybe the first time in the franchise someone spoke back to Samara. So he goes to smoke a cigarette, and a fly materializes inside of it and crawls out. This was very effective and very well done. The fly buzzes off to the window, and he follows it. He tries to squish it, and you see that the fly is now on the other side of the window. He's confused and stares out the window as the fly takes off out of sight. It's then that he and we notice the rain outside is raining up. It's pouring up his windows. Again, very well done and very effective. The camera pans out and you're allowed to really take in the sight. Cool as shit. Then the windows flash to an image from the tape. Not to Johnny Galecki, but to us. Fucking gratuitous. Turns into the logo. Didn't ruin the awesome moment and it starts to sink in that I'm watching a Ring movie in 2017. By the way, it is almost always raining in this movie.
So then we meet the real leads. Impossibly attractive sexy white teens. He's going off to his first day of college, so she sees him off. She says he smells nice as they embrace, and he OF COURSE takes his shirt off. He's told her the story of Orpheus and Eurydice, wherein she has died so he travels to the underworld to rescue her. As part of the deal to revive her, he would not be allowed to look back at her as they emerged from the underworld until they had returned fully to the world of the living. For some reason, he couldn't help himself, turned around to look at her, and she was cast back to the depths below. Cool story, right? "Don't turn around," one sexy teen says to another. So she walks down the suburban stretch as he drives away, smelling his shirt. This is already groanworthy, but what I found particularly weird is that he's shown from the shoulders up as he takes his shirt off, and as she's walking away he's out of focus. As he gets in the car, they show him from the shoulders up. You get very little of a look at him shirtless. And of course, he's got a crazy body. Why on Earth would you write a gratuitous shirtless scene for the male lead, and then hide him? Huh? Not that I'm here to see that, but it just felt like a symptom of a bigger problem with the movie. The writer seems to want one thing out of a scene, and the director seems to want another thing. Possibly, test audiences want a third thing and the final result is what was shot being shoehorned into that. Weird.
So now, he's been at college for a week or so and they're on Skype. Things start to get a little sexy, when two friends of his (both people of color who are never named) pop up out of nowhere (the first of many, many jump scares) and pull him away. This is supposed to be unsettling as the call cuts out mid-sentence. But this isn't before he drops a hint of 'remember this' in him thinking his biology teacher is badass. One guess who that teacher is.
Fast forward to... weeks later, I guess? He's stopped returning his calls and texts, and she's clearly worried. She falls asleep and wakes up to him on top of her. "Told you I'd make it up to you" he says as he starts to actually go down on her. He's holding her hand and then so is Samara! She doesn't seem to notice until he comes up for air and says, "Name!" By the way, I remember this movie beat by beat yet I actually forget their names and I think that's too funny to ignore. So he calls out to her, she looks down, and... he's there and it's normal? But there's a figure coming up from behind him and I guess she notices the extra hands and JUMP SCARE! She's awake and it's the middle of the night. As she's waking up, ring ring! Her laptop is on and she's getting a Skype call from him. Only, it's not him! "WHERE IS HE?!" screams Skye, whose face is distorted in that classic I-have-seven-days-to-live-please-watch-this-tape way. "I don't know!" "WELL, TELL HIM HE CAN'T RUN AWAY FROM ME!" "What's wrong with you?" This is presumably about the whole face distortion thing. Skye is belligerent. So the call ends and this is all She needs to hear. She hops in the car and off she goes to get to the bottom of this. I don't know why she didn't do this before when later events in the movie imply they're deeply in love and the earlier shot of her text messages to him implied he's been MIA for at least a week. But whatever.
So She gets there and by this time it's morning. She heads to his dorm room which of course is open and snoops. She takes a bracelet of his off the wall that I guess looks significant, sees his schedule and notes he's got a lecture from that badass biology teacher he mentioned (spoiler alert: it's Johnny Galecki), but not before hearing a text tone. She looks under his desk to find his phone. None of the calls or texts have been answered in a while and they've really stacked up. But She can't look for long because of course, the phone dies.
So off She goes to the lecture which is already in progress. Johnny Galecki is talking about souls and life after death, but it's cut off when he becomes distracted by Her and lets everyone out. "Go get drunk!" he says to his class and to me. As everyone is leaving, she spots the nameless friends of color. "Oh, you're the girlfriend." "Where is He?" "You shouldn't have come here." They leave. Unfazed, she approaches Johnny Galecki. "Can I help you with something?" "I'm looking for my boyfriend. Name McName. Have you seen him?" "I see a lot of people. Doesn't ring a bell." "Really? Because he told me about some extra credit project he was doing with you." "(flustered) ...You know, it's not unusual here that a freshman finds something, or someone, more interesting than college and takes off. My advice? Go home and move on." He collects his things and leaves but she's not far behind. She spots him going into an elevator and watches as the light above the entrance indicates he's going to the 7th floor. Get it? 7th floor? 7 days? Anyways.
The elevator won't start. Will not her go to the 7th floor. Unless! She takes out the key she swiped from the dorm room, uses it to effortlessly unlock the elevator, and up she goes to the 7th floor. She gets up there and it's a long hallway leading to a camcorder actively recording and some papers. She walks up, quickly inspects the camera, then looks at the papers. It's a bound copy of (the title escapes me but it was something like) "THE SAMARA THEORY: Life after death something something biology" She looks through it and the weirdest thing I've ever seen plays out on screen. What you're seeing is the camera footage of her in real time looking through this book, complete with overdone scanlines and shit to sell that it's this camera, but at the same time, overlaid on top of it is the book itself as she flips through it. But it's not like pages of it overlaid on the screen, it's footage of the book I guess shot from over her shoulder and the backdrop is cut out so that it's overlaid on the camera footage with the scanlines and shit, but the footage of the book has no such visual flair. It's fucking weird and dumb looking and unnecessary. Not weird is what's in the book: Everything the series mythos has established that people who are infected create-- scratched out faces in magazine clippings, random circles, you name it. So she puts the book back down, guess she's thinking like, "Huh, what a weird book" and continues down the hallway.
Inside? It's a damn speakeasy. There's people hanging out, a bunch of digital clocks on one wall counting down with names attached, and pictures of peoples' faces all distorted Ring-style, including Name McName which She notices. General Ring stuff abound. She tries to blend in and spots Skye confronting Johnny Galecki. She hides behind a conveniently-placed pillar and listens in. "Where's my tail?!" Skye yells. "He didn't show. We'll find you one. Everything will be okay!" Johnny Galecki says unconvincingly. "It's different this time, I'm telling you!" "That's what they all say." "No, it is! I can feel her! She wants to come back!" "Listen, we'll find someone. Where's Name McName?" "He's taken off! Nobody can find him! You have to get me a tail!" Galecki seems uninterested so Skye takes off. As Skye heads for the elevator, She pursues her, but is stopped in the hallway by one half of the nameless friends of color with two girls hanging off of him. "Honestly, I saw the tape and it like, wasn't even that scary!" he actually says before spotting Her. "Hey, you're not supposed to be here!" he yells. This obviously does nothing to stop Her and she never sees either friend again. She ends up in the parking lot and approaches Skye. "Oh, it's you." "I'm looking for Name. What's going on?" I'll take a quick pause here to say that this delivery from Her is SO UNBELIEVABLY BAD I actually choked on my drink and laughed out loud. I came to learn that the lead actress is Italian and speaks English as a second language. Really well, in fact! But boy, while she can very often hide the accent well (though certainly not always), her delivery is not at all in line with how native English speakers talk and it's extremely jarring and terrible. It sounds like I'm being overly negative on this point, but really, it is probably the worst thing about the whole movie. Anyways, there's a sparkle in Skye's eye. "I'll tell you everything, but I have to show you something first." Uh oh!
They're at Skye's apartment. Skye says, "Watch where you step. I just painted the ceiling." She looks up and sees an actually very cool painted rendition of the graphite circles people seem to draw when they're under the influence of the curse. Skye is scrambling on her laptop for like a weird amount of time considering she literally just has to click copy, then paste, then play. So she's in the zone on her laptop, and her phone vibrates. Skye doesn't hear it, but SHE does. She snoops through the phone and sees that the text is from Name McName. 'Yo new phone what up did you get that tail?' it basically said. She types back, 'NAME?? It's not Skye! It's She McShe!' He sends back a flurry of texts. 'SHE?? WHERE ARE YOU?? ARE YOU AT SKYE'S??' Skye speaks up, "Okay, so you just watch it and it's only 2 minutes and then we'll talk and everything will be cool. Okay? Okay?" Skye turns around and spots She with her phone. "IS THAT MY PHONE?!" She looks down to Skye's phone. Name McName texts again. 'DON'T WATCH!!!!!'
A struggle ensues. She manages to push Skye off, runs to the bathroom and locks the door. "Just watch it! It'll be fine!" Skye pounds at the door and pleads with her but it's not long before light appears from the living room. Uh oh. Time's up. Iconic well shot on the laptop. Skye pulls out the router and the laptop power but it doesn't stop. "It's not real!" she screams as she throws the laptop across the room. But then the well shot is on the TV. Skye furiously pulls at the cords behind the TV and then the TV itself, and it lands on the floor with a crash. Skye looks accomplished until the white noise pops back up and light appears to emanate from the unplugged and surely broken face down TV. Water pours from it and she looks defeated. Samara pushes the TV up by way of exiting it as it's face down and it's very cool looking and the sort of inventiveness I'd hope to see in a revisit to the franchise. The camera follows Samara as she stands up and the TV scratches down her back, but cuts exactly as the TV rolls off her butt and lands back on the floor with an audible thud. Samara does exactly the same quick teleport from the climax of the first film and just the same, Skye falls into furnishings behind her and crashes down. SHE is listening intently from the bathroom. Samara's face emerges from her hair and it cuts to HER in the bathroom as Skye's scream dies out and you can quickly hear what seems to be a combination of a shuffle and a chair scratching the floor. But Samara doesn't just dip out! Oh, no. She approaches the bathroom door and Julia (HER name is Julia, I just remembered) is terrified. The door handle turns slowly and when the door swings open, Samara is gone but the body of Skye is propped up in a chair in front of the TV facing away from Julia. So she runs to the door and scrambles to get out. But it's locked from the fucking inside because something something Skye is crazy. So anyways, she approaches the body and rifles through Skye's pocket until the hunched over body... damn, how do I word this? The motion of the pocket rifle is enough to push the limp, hunched over upper body back and expose Skye's twisted face (which looked MUCH better than the awful ones from The Ring Two) which for some reason makes like a bone shifty crunchy sound because why not. Julia I guess is already holding the key (and how deep is that damn pocket) so she screams and takes back off for the door. She unlocks the door and just as she does, TWIST! The door opens, and it's Holt! The sexy teen formerly known as Name McName whose name I just remembered.
So just to take a bit of a breather here, I LOVED that the body was propped up in the chair and the audio cue that it took place nigh instantly. The mystery of how bodies ended up in the position and spot they're ultimately found in was one of the creepier elements of the original, I always thought. They didn't have to do that. It was always an insignificant thing in the overall picture so I really appreciated it and it was fucking cool. Added to it immensely. Also, the effects work was fantastic and it dodged the worst part of the first film by not having the hair divide over Samara's face in such a way that you could tell the actress was holding and pulling the hair away herself in two clear pieces like so:
This was way more obvious when watching the movie and the GIF might not portray what I mean so clearly as there's definitely a couple frames where you can see the hair get closer together before it's pulled away as if it's being grabbed at that moment. But I digress. Additionally, I thought Samara sticking around after the kill was a cute aftershock of that original Ring Two treatment wherein one midquel sequence takes place in the opening of the first film and shows the perspective of the friend as the niece is killed which she hears and is then approached by Samara. Considering the first film implied 'The rules are different now! She's free!' it didn't seem like Samara made a habit of extracurricular appearances outside of harassing Rachel and Aidan so that was very cool and I loved it.
I just clicked Preview Post and saw that this is already ABSURDLY long, like in the territory of longest GAF post I have ever seen, and I'm not even halfway through this damn movie, so I think I'm gonna take a break and finish up after some sleep.
I'll hint at the second part and say that
up until this point, the movie seemed to play entirely within the sandbox of the established rules as we knew them. The movie very shortly after decides to reinvent the wheel which I wanted to hate but wound up enjoying. Inexplicably. I wished, going in, that this movie wouldn't do that as it was to me the most offensively bad element of The Ring Two and served only to muddy the water and over-complicate and over-explain. This go around, I had fun with it. Genuinely.
If you don't have a penchant for the franchise, and/or can't handle CLEARLY b-movie performances, it's not the movie for you. Go ahead and click.
If you have tickets bought already or you're a big fan and have to wait for some reason to buy it, don't click. I literally give a play-by-play of the first 40 minutes of the movie and will be writing another post covering the remainder when I don't feel like death. Insert tagline joke here.
I'm a horror movie fan so I'll see every single one regardless how trashy they might be.
So I guess I'm hard passing on the spoilers.
Sumio Mondo
Member
Nope. That film sucked.
This is the one we were talking about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ring_0:_Birthday
Monocle
Member
Yeah I enjoyed it immensely and took the time to explain why. It's clear that the hysterical spite people have for that movie is partly a consequence of the tone deaf marketing, but more a result of brainless dogpiling and cynical
hyperbole, with a healthy dose of sexism for good measure. I've never seen someone coherently explain why it's the worst film ever made without smugly taking for granted that it's unfunny trash. Which it really isn't.
So what do you think of Rings, champ? Guess one aberrant opinion out of dozens or hundreds of more fashionable ones must mean I'm wrong about all movies ever.
:lol
Gordon Shumway
Banned
Yeah..almost lol.
My gf wanted to watch last night despite all the evidence I presented that it's trash.
It's not 0% on RT bad, but I wouldn't give it anything over 30. The ending was also dumb as fuck. The lead girl looks A LOT like Jessica Alba, i couldn't shake that off. She also has the acting range of a damn chair smh.
It's not 0% on RT bad, but I wouldn't give it anything over 30. The ending was also dumb as fuck. The lead girl looks A LOT like Jessica Alba, i couldn't shake that off. She also has the acting range of a damn chair smh.
cj_iwakura
Member
The best way to watch the original is on VHS. It instantly plays The video at the start of the tape.
Gordon Shumway
Banned
lol..Honestly, I don't think she looks like Jessica Alba. Don't get it..
Messofanego
Banned
Man, I would never have guessed this thread of all threads to be catching bans so fast lmao
So it's now at 6%. Heh, I called it. Got that Norm of the North sympathy bump!
Monocle's post shouldn't have counted for six percent.
killatopak
Gold Member
0%
The ring
The ring
Lord Frieza
Member
Link?
ffejeromdiks
Banned
I'm shocked to see so many hold the remake in such high regard, I've always thought it came across as run of the mil shlock horror.
WaffleTaco
Wants to outlaw technological innovation.
I really enjoyed The Ring movie when I was younger. Probably one of the better horror films I have seen. It sucks that this one totally bombed.
lightskintwin
Banned
The American remake was good. Up to that point, mainstream American and probably western audiences were unfamiliar with J-Horror and for a lot of people that was their introduction to it and Gore Verbinski did an admirable job directing it.
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