Sequeling The Ring 2 from twelve years prior, Rings starts off pretty well. Someone who has watched the video from the previous movies is on a plane when his seven day countdown runs out. What are they going to do with this, I wonder? Well.
Disregarding pretty much all of the work created in the previous movies, the lore, characters, etc. Rings, while trying to be a sequel, comes off as a re-imagining. It really has nothing to do with US remakes The Ring and The Ring 2, and certainly nothing to do with Ringu.
Sadly, it comes off as the poor relation no one really wants to admit to knowing. Written by David Loucka, Jacob Estes and Akiva Goldsman, you would have expected more than a shallow PG-13 remake, but sadly not. Director F. Javier Gutiérrez starts well - the opening scenes are effectual - but once the film hits it's pace he brings nothing to the table. The protagonists come in the form of Julia, played by Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz (Revenge), searching for her wayward boyfriend, Holt (!), played by Alex Roe (Siren). Neither actor has much experience and really couldn't carry the film. Star power comes in the form of Johnny Galecki (In Time) who must have tried really hard to be that unlikable, and Vincent D'Onofrio (Sinister) in a rare poor role choice. Unable to bring anything new to the table, the plot circles and re-hashes the plot of the US remake, while trying desperately to be different, to the point of destroying itself from the inside.
It flops around like a carp gasping for breath on the cold hard floor of failure in pretty much every way. Too harsh? Well, the FX are okay.