When I first saw the new official trailer for Rings, the
upcoming addition to The Ring franchise, my immediate reaction was ‘meh’. This
is never a good reaction to any trailer, let alone one that is supposed to
terrify you and pull you back into an older franchise’s world.
The Ring (2002), which was an adaptation of the Japanese
classic Ringu, was a hit with the audiences and introduced the iconic image of
the ghostly Samara crawling out of the television set to the masses. The second
movie though… was not as good. Let’s just leave it at that.
So falling in line with the grand tradition of ‘enough time
has passed and so let us sell this again’, Paramount Pictures seems to have
come out with this latest one.
Rings.
Now, there have been great trailers before, especially in
the horror genre, which only led to predictable, trashy movies. And there have
been great movies whose trailers never did them justice.
So I am not willing to sit here and self-assuredly predict with
conviction how good or bad this movie is going to be. But I am going to make a
few educated guesses based on what the trailer itself revealed and the tone it
set.
What struck me first of all was that the almost haunting
grey and gloomy ambiance of the original movie, which was cinematically
beautiful, was completely gone in this one. In fact, the scenes and shots they
chose for this trailer made it look more like a television series with a
moderate budget. Or maybe a cheaper independent movie. Although saying that,
come to think of it, would be a disservice to some of the great horror movies
the indie scene has produced in recent years.
Anyway, the visual choices including cinematography and
editing style, along with the effectively deliberate pacing of the first movie
served in telling a great horror story. The audiences felt the melancholic
isolation of the main characters caught up in this saga, and moved with them
from the urban settings to the dreary locales the plot took them to, without
missing a beat.
Rings (2016) Trailer
The Rings trailer though seemed chaotic, and too full of hastily
jammed in plot points. As a matter of fact, it looks like they gave a fair
amount of the plot away. It also felt like it was aiming for something beyond
its reach in terms of what the story could be.
Samara terrifies her victims by creating an ever narrowing
tunnel of fear and despair that they are forced to walk. With each day and each
passing second, the terror approaches them, and they are caught in a lonely
struggle to fight this inevitable chilling end – often with no one to believe
them or help them.
It is scary on an individual level.
This is what connected with the audiences. In other words,
it worked.
This movie is different at first glance, and it seems to be
a formula for failure as far as a horror experience is concerned.
They seem to have made Samara into a movie monster like
Freddy Krueger or Jason Vorhees that can be unleashed on a large population for
‘maximum number of thrills and scares’.
Instead of building tension and suspense in the limited
trailer time they had, they have focused more on physically disturbing sequences
and effects.
They even clearly showed Samara’s face in one shot.
Something the original kept secret for the better part of the film.
Somehow, all of this makes her less scary and more generic
and bland.
The original film, which started the whole craze with the
character of Samara, is the one they are still trying to milk in pitching this
movie to today’s audiences. Then why be so drastically different from it? Is it
a brave venture by the makers of the film, or is it an unintentional screw up?
An attempt gone wrong, to be more than the original by simply doing more things
than it?
In any case, I guess we will find out when the movie hits
the big screens, though I have to say my hopes have been considerably diminished
in the wake of this trailer.
