alyeskanstars
You're drunk, wandering around by yourself. It's a good night. You stumble into a little hole in the wall pizza joint. And you taste the best slice of pizza in your damn life.You think about that pizza from time to time for a good twelve years. You tell your friends about the time you ate the best slice of pizza ever. One day, you find yourself walking down a familiar path and notice that this once hole in the wall pizza joint has expanded. It's got a great aesthetic. You decide to try another slice. You chew through the burnt crust and awful toppings, hoping it'll get better. You even begin to panic. How could I have ever thought this was good. Out of the corner of your eye, you see a small girl with long, dark hair who whispers, "under new management."
MaximumMadness
I've been fairly upfront in past reviews about being something of a fan of the famous (and infamous) "Ring" media franchise. From the original Koji Suzuki novels, through the highly-acclaimed original Japanese film series... and indeed through the almost prerequisite American reboot and its own follow-ups, I've been following the franchise for near 20-years now. Through highs and lows. Through ups and downs. I was so captivated by the phenomenal origins of story, that I just can't stop myself from continuing to tag along for the ride... awaiting the next installment whenever it might come.And after a prolonged absence, the franchise finally returned to American screens with 2017's "Rings"- a belated follow-up that was released more than a decade after the previous outting. With a notably troubled production, the film was repeatedly shelved and subjected to near nonstop re-writes, re-shoots and re-edits before being dumped onto screens with little fanfare. And while it did turn a light profit, the film was met with an almost universally venomous backlash from both critics and audiences alike. People hated this film. And sadly it is for good reason."Rings" is a catastrophic failure. Spectacular, even. For a franchise with such high and respected a pedigree, it's almost inconceivable how often and how aggressively the film falters and falls flat. How many times it confuses rather than enthralls. And how many basic, fundamental mistakes could be fit into a mere 100 minute timeframe.Buckle up, folks. This is gonna get ugly.The film's narrative is a discombobulated mass of loosely connected plot-lines, mainly following a young woman named Julia (Matilda Lutz), whom is drawn into the mystery of the legendary haunted video-tape by her boyfriend Holt. (Alex Roe) At the same time, there's some strange business regarding a skeevy college professor (Johnny Galecki) whose obsessed with the tape after randomly finding it at a flea-market, some nonsensical new twists on the origin of the villainous specter Samara Morgan (Bonnie Morgan), and a whole lotta confusing scenes that seemingly add nothing to the film... including a laughably over-the-top cold open that so far as I can tell is completely unrelated to the main plot.To the film's credit, I will say that director F. Javier Gutierrez has a keen eye for visuals, and the choice in shots and composition is suitably decent. It does indeed look enough like the prior films, and there's a few cool moments to be had. But they are too few and far between to salvage what is otherwise a complete and utter train-wreck of a film.To start, the pacing and editing are flat-out infuriating. From the wonky opening act through the head-scratching climax, the film rockets through plot-lines and twists like a cartoon on caffeine. Characters will be introduced one minute, and by the next minute suddenly be in life-or-death peril. A storyline will be brought up in once scene... then completely dropped two scenes later without resolution. All the while, the film just moves, moves, moves. There's no breathing room whatsoever, resulting in an almost immediate inability to follow the story's development. By the fifteen minute mark, I was almost completely lost. By the thirty minute mark? I just didn't care anymore. And by the halfway point? I had to resort to reading the synopsis on Wikipedia just to understand the cavalcade of nonsense being hurled at my eyes.This certainly isn't aided by the amateurish structure and production, which was frankly dumbfounding. The film, as it has been released, doesn't look, sound or even function like a movie. It just doesn't. Almost immediately, the placement of simple things like music or even just the title card made no sense. Yes, you read that right... the film doesn't even put the title in the right place, instead just slapping it in about ten minutes in after a few random, disconnected scenes, in a spot where it feels jarring and out-of-place. And it's immediately followed by a tender romantic scene involving our heroes... that for some reason has scary horror music playing in the background. And it just gets worse from there. Especially in the second half, when revelations begin to play out that basically make no sense and convolute the backstory to the point it starts to contradict the two movies that came before. It's like they slapped together scenes from three or four different movies, dropped in some temp music tracks, and called it a day. And don't even get me started on the dreadful production design. I'm pretty sure the main character's bedroom set is someone's front porch with a bed and a computer desk on it... because it looks like someone put a bed and a computer desk on their front porch. Seriously.And then there's the cast. I don't want to be mean... but everyone is terrible. Absolutely, almost wonderfully terrible. It's clear the actors and actresses were cast for their looks and not their talents, because there's not a single person here who looks like they know what they're doing... except for a wonderfully dopey turn from Johnny Galecki, who hams it up in a performance that I can only call "bad faux Vincent Price." He makes the movie amusing when he's on-screen, at least. Meanwhile, our lead Matilda Lutz is so instantly bland and forgettable, I actually kept getting her confused with the other female characters, who also put in similarly apathetic performances... and who all look oddly alike. I suppose Mr. Gutierrez has a "type," so to speak.Look, there's no other way of saying this. "Rings" is dreadful. Not only the worst of the American film trilogy, but possibly the worst of the entire overall media franchise. As bad as "Sadako 3D" was, at least it had some funny moments. "Rings" on the other hand? It's just confusingly bad. And it earns a well-deserved 1 out of 10. Hopefully the next targets Samara goes after are the director and producers who made this crap.
