Utterly spiritless: Rings review by Rashid Irani

The film maintains a glacial pace throughout, with false scares and artsy imagery that totally fail to scare.

RINGS

This time around, it’s a teenager and her hunky college boyfriend who are the unsuspecting victims.

Direction: F Javier Gutierrez

Actors: Matilda Lutz, Alex Roe

Rating: 0.5 / 5

It started back in 1998 with a smart Japanese supernatural thriller called Ringu. Sensing its crossover potential, Hollywood subsequently produced an English-language remake.

While the 2002 American interpretation, The Ring, was effective, its sequel, The Ring Two (2005), was a damp squib.

Hoping in vain to cash in on the original film’s allure, this redundant US threequel belatedly circulates the cursed videotape all over again.

This time around, it’s a teenager (Italian model Matilda Lutz, somnambulistic) and her hunky college boyfriend (Alex Roe) who are the unsuspecting victims. Having viewed the now-digitised VHS footage, they are marked for death within seven days.

Read: Resident Evil The Final Chapter movie review: Like being eaten to death by zombies

The original movie in 2002 was adapted from the Japanese thriller called Ringu

Following not one but two inept prologues — the script, by the way, is attributed to five writers — the duo-in-distress attempts to get to the heart of the mystery of the vengeful spirit.

The aim of Rings may have been to revive a long-dormant horror franchise, but the outcome is likely to be forgotten even before all the end credits have rolled.

Watch trailer for Rings here