Teaser Trailer for RINGS

In the fall of 2002 I was a very impressionable fifteen year-old who'd never really experienced a horror film in the darkness of a movie theater before. Hell, I'm not sure I'd ever really experienced a horror movie at all-my parents weren't exactly the movie watching types and as the oldest child I had no one to show me what was cool or hip at the time. This is all to bring us around to the fact that when I wandered into The Ring in October of that year I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I was terrified after seeing it. I couldn't imagine a scarier experience than the one just shown to me. I was so morbidly fascinated by this ability of a film, something essentially intangible, to have as great an effect on me as it did. I went back to see it again and still director Gore Verbinski's film frightened me despite knowing when the jumps and scares were coming. To this day, The Ring is one of my favorite scary movies and I have since caught up with what many would regard as classics of the genre. And so, I was disappointed when the promise of original director Hideo Nakata (who made the 1998 Japanese horror film Ringu on which The Ring was based) returning to direct the American sequel in 2005 turned out to be little more than a cash grab with very few artistic aspirations. This brings us to 2016 where, fourteen years after the original hit theaters, we have a third film in the franchise that will look to bring Samara into the digital age and no doubt terrify a whole new crop of people who dare to watch the video that is said to kill them seven days after doing so. Despite what feels like countless production and release delays Paramount has finally released this teaser only two months before the films release date and while this first look at director F. Javier Gutiérrez's installment certainly seems to be more rehash than original take I can maybe see how this could be fun. Only time will tell, but expectations certainly aren't high. Rings stars Matilda Lutz, Vincent D’Onofrio, Alex Roe, Johnny Galecki, Aimee Teegarden, Bonnie Morgan, and opens on October 28, 2016.