Rings (2017)

Rings takes the franchise’s elegantly simple nightmare—a week-long countdown after watching a cursed tape—and gives it a sleek, modern pulse, leaning into the eerie idea of obsession as much as the supernatural. F. Javier Gutiérrez stages the scares with a polished, cold-glass visual style, and Matilda Lutz grounds the film’s escalating dread with a performance that feels more determined than dumb, which matters in a story this high-concept. The best hook is how it toys with “the movie within the movie,” adding a layer of mystery that keeps you watching even when you think you know the rules. It’s not the subtlest or most inventive entry in the series, and PG-13 limits the nastiness, but if you want a glossy, fast-moving horror ride with a strong central premise and a few genuinely unsettling images, it’s an easy seven-day appointment.

Rings is clearly trying to modernize the Ring mythos for the smartphone era, expanding the lore with a “movie within the movie” hook and a bigger conspiracy angle. The problem is it trades the original’s creeping dread for a muddled, over-explained plot that feels repetitive and oddly low on genuine scares, so a lot of scenes play more like homework than horror. Matilda Lutz commits and there are a few unsettling images that remind you what this franchise can do, but the pacing is sluggish and the mystery doesn’t land with much punch. If you want tight, atmospheric terror or a smart continuation of the series, this may feel like a pale echo; it’s more for completionists who’ll watch anything with Samara attached.