Rings (2005)

Although it has its amusing moments, in eneral the plot does not convince.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

The movie really just wants to entertain people.

"Rings" is, as you may have guessed from the title already, closely connected to the "Ring" movie series. I am not familiar with any of these movies, so I am probably as unbiased as it gets for a viewer here. Jonathan Liebesman is a fairly famous director, much more today than back then. Anyway, this short film was made 10 years ago and it runs for roughly 18 minutes. In terms of horror, I must say I was not really scared at any point during this little film. It basically lives of drastic sudden changes in volume and that is never a good sign, because I want to be scared of what I see and not of what i hear. it's also not very creative. The lead actor did an okay job I guess, but as a whole I cannot really recommend this movie to anybody other than the biggest fans of the "real" films. Thumbs down.

This is best described as a prologue for The Ring Two(and it is located on the DVD of it), and it relies on the viewer already knowing the concept as explained in the first(American remake) movie. It sets up the sequel, and scares the crap out of us, all in less than twenty minutes(!). Seriously, apart from the fact that this does use stuff that has already been gone into in the franchise, it manages to deliver exposition, give us characters to sympathize with and shoot us full of a healthy dose of fear. The pace is fast, but never too much so, and the frightening parts are still heavily based on build-up, mood and atmosphere(and frankly, no gore, none, and it works beautifully). All of the acting performances are solid. The editing and cinematography are energetic and creative, and there is really no point in this where it slows down, and yet it doesn't feel rushed. Sound and music are perfect, absolutely spot-on. The idea here is very well-thought out, and they get excellent moments out of it. This is immensely effective, and if you have the opportunity to watch it, and you have the knowledge required beforehand. I recommend it to anyone who is into psychological horror. 10/10

I shall be honest about this. I liked it, it was the best short movie I ever saw, as far as i am concerned. In a matter of fact, I liked this one way better than the true sequel. It's very thrilling, to watch how a teen slowly grows insane while being in the presence of Samara Morgan. It's very realistic, just like how I would see it happen in real life. It's far more realistic than The Ring. i mean, if I'd been Rachel, I would have freaked out the first day or something. Screw 'finding out what mystery lies behind the tape'. I'd lose my mind!Sometimes I actually screamed and crushed my friend's arm. So a big bravo.

I think that the Idea behind this cult that is forming right in front of our very eyes, that cult being Samara basically and what happened to her, very interesting and since buying the collectors edition DVD's I must have watched RINGS at least ten times and I enjoyed it the tenth time just as much as the first time.Rings makes the perfect join between THE RING and RING TWO. Lots of people complain about the unexplained bits of the story, personally I think that makes this brilliant cult film ten time better then it already is. As far as I'm concerned these films are some of if not the best pieces of film making to date, not forgetting the original RINGU of course which was also great considering the low budget.POSSIBLE SPOILERS PAST THIS POINT.I think Hideao Nakatta (Apologies for the spelling) has created one of the best Horror characters in Samara and her life, short as it was, would make a great film by itself. (Mabey I should have kept that Idea to myself) The classic art of symbolism which the Japanese do so well has been done to perfection with this story. The way they have shown Samara's connection with water has almost made it a character in its self. I think that these films have a lot more in them then most people care to reallies and if you really think about everything thats happened up to now has had a reason. Finally, at the centre of all this is of course the tape, which in its self is pretty creepy, but everything you saw on that tape the first time it's shown to us has now been explained in some way or another.These films are truly amazing.