**WARNING: SPOILERS! If you do not wish to have “The Ring Two,” and “Rings” spoiled for you, DO NOT READ**

    As 2017 continues, many anticipate the release of several films, such as Split, Logan, Get Out, The Belko Experiment, and Star Wars: The Last Jedi. One of the most anticipated films of this year is Rings, the sequel to the 2003 film series, The Ring.

    The movie hit theaters across the world on Feb. 3, with fans of the franchise since the original Japanese horror, Ringu, raking in roughly $30 million as of Feb. 7. WIth a budget of $25 million, the film has gained only $5 million in profit.

    The sequel attempted to do a modern take on the story of Samara Morgan, a child who was adopted by a couple that could not have children. After her adoption, the family experienced several strange phenomenons, from Samara creating images in people’s heads to the family horses committing suicide, resulting in her admission to a psychiatric ward. Her adoptive mother, Anna Morgan, could no longer take Samara after her release from the ward, and pushed her into the family well, resulting in her death a week thereafter. Despite Anna’s attempt to get rid of the child, Samara continued to haunt the family until Anna and her husband committed suicide. To terrorize the world and share her story, she possessed a VHS tape with graphic images, and kills the viewers after 7 days, unless they make a copy of the film and show it to another person.

    In the new installment of the series, it features Julia, the girlfriend of a college freshman, Holt, who is participating in an experiment by his professor regarding the contents of the possessed video as an extra credit assignment. When his professor and fellow classmates who have also seen the tape fail to pull find another person to watch the tape, his fate falls in the hands of Julia, who watches the tape in order to save his life. However, when Julia tries to make a copy of the video, her copy won’t process due to the fact that her video contains new content that was never in the original. The new content of the video tries to show Julia what she needs to do in order for the chain of horrific events to finally come to an end, and reveals Samara’s biological father.

    Despite the film trying to show the film in a new light and answer some unanswered questions, it failed during its execution. Unlike the films before it that received high ratings, the new installment of a franchise received a 6 percent by Rotten Tomatoes and a 4.6/10 by IMDb as of Feb. 9, being the worst related film of 2017 thus far.

    One major flaw that was never explained was regarding the ending of the previous film, The Ring Two. At the end of The Ring Two, the main character, Rachel, was dragged into her television by Samara because she felt that all the child wanted was a mother to love her. After her descent into the well, it becomes clear that the reason Samara can escape from her “home” and into the realm of the living is due to the fact that the well is always open, so she can come and go as she pleases. Rachel escapes the well, and pushes the stone well cover over the top, sealing Samara inside for eternity. One would think that this was the end of the franchise, but with the release of Rings, it has made the ending of the The Ring Two redundant. The new installment could not explain how Samara, or another unfortunate soul who managed to enter Samara’s realm, opened the well, making it possible for Samara to escape and wreak havoc on the realm of the living.

    Another reason the film did not live up to its expectations was the opening scene. The trailer showed a scene where someone who did not show the video to someone else was on an airplane, resulting in Samara appearing on all of the plane’s monitors and killing everyone aboard in a plane crash. Although the scene was well played out and gave members of the audience who are new to the franchise an idea of what Samara can do, the people in the scene were not tied to the rest of characters in the film whatsoever and had absolutely no impact on the rest of the movie. The scene merely tried to lure people in by casting well known actors such as Laura Slade Wiggins from the hit Showtime television series, Shameless (US), Lizzie Brocheré from FX’s American Horror Story: Asylum, and Zach Roerig from CW’s The Vampire Diaries. If the characters had been tied to the rest of the film in some way, that scene would have had more significance.

    The new installment dug itself into a bigger hole when it did not answer questions that the previous films did not address. One question it never addressed is why Samara is evil. In the franchise, they said that Samara’s mother, Evelyn, attempted to self-abort on more than one occasion, and tried to drown her as an infant because she claimed there was something wrong with the child and that “Samara told her to.” No explanation was ever given as to why Samara was evil, so many hoped that her evil origins would come to light with Rings release.  Despite being given a perfect opportunity to explain why Samara is evil by introducing her biological father, the producers and writers did not act on it. Within the entire one hour and fifty-seven minutes of screentime, there was no explanation given as to why the child can do what she can do or why she is evil, leaving many fans, new and old, with no sense of closure.

    One can expect a horror film to consist of horrifying and heart-stopping jump scares, but Rings failed to deliver jump scares that would send the audience home in fear that maybe Samara was lurking somewhere in the dark, ready to attack. The scares consisted of 2 mangled faces, a slap on a window, an umbrella opening, and a bird flying into a car windshield at full speed.

    Lastly, the modernization of the franchise that made the film more eerie was taken away. One thing that many fans of the series loved was the fact that it was an technologically advanced film. To make a copy of the tape, one had to go make a physical copy of the VHS tape and show it someone else. In Rings, it was as simple as a right click, clicking the “copy” option, and sending a mass text or email with the video file to whoever’s number was on a contact list that can be viewed in mere minutes after sending it. With the modernization of the film, it has made it very simple task to save one’s life.

    Personally, I would not recommend anyone watch this film, even if they have been fans of the series since Ringu or The Ring. As a fan of the film since the age of 5, Rings just seemed like a completely different film. One could put Rings in the same category as the Rob Zombie reboot of the famous horror franchise, Halloween: just forget the film exists. While I did enjoy the attempt to take a twist on the story regarding the professor using his students as lab rats, the acting was subpar, the ending made no sense, so now there can be no sequel unless the producers decide to disregard Rings entirely while keeping the information from it. About one hour into the film, I considered leaving the theater and sneaking into the theater playing Split, even though I would have missed the first fifteen minutes of the film. It was not scary at all; I was more scared of the trailers shown before the film played in the theater. None of the questions I’ve asked over the last 10 years have been answered despite have the chance to give reasoning.

   If you are considering seeing Rings, go home and watch Ringu. It is not worth the time or money seeing this film. Go see Split or The Lego Batman Movie instead.