Circles within circles. It’s been 15 years since The Ring, Gore Verbinski’s American translation of the cult Japanese horror Ringu, which means an entire generation of westerners might not have been scared or bored to death by the sight of lank-haired spooks emerging from the gogglebox. This update for the era of iPhones and .MOV files has very quickly to acknowledge that the VHS players that perpetuated this curse circa the millennium are now practically occult items, less likely to be found occupying cherished home-cinema space than collecting dust, along with Ouija boards in junkshops.
Another key shift: where Verbinski’s redo could star a thirtysomething Naomi Watts, the refresh retools the material for those college kids who have come to overrun multiplexes in the past decade and a half. Yet – given how much of this legend has been unspooled – it’s miraculous that the presiding script committee have alighted upon an at least semi-involving mystery. This centres on the inquiries of young Julia (appealing Ellen Page-alike Matilda Lutz) into her errant boyfriend’s participation in an extracurricular research project overseen by Professor Gabriel (Johnny Galecki, nicely ambiguous) – a tangent that slyly suggests this phenomenon might merit further study.
Director F Javier Gutiérrez has evidently parsed every thesis going on The Ring Series and Female Sexuality; but he also has fun with the franchise’s organising visual conceit (stalled Mac cursors, AA circles) and handles the setpieces with quiet aplomb. The admirably loopy finale, involving blind Vincent d’Onofrio’s swarming army of cicadas, is worthy of one of the better Exorcist sequels. But we are a world away from the quiet culture shock of Ringu, which lurked in far-flung corners of video shops and the rep circuit; this offshoot is essentially a well-produced, easily accessed B-movie. Still, it wouldn’t kill you to watch it, and it does more than expected to reinvent its particular wheel.
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