Review: Ring 0 (2000)

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Directed by:
Cast: , ,

Distributed in Australia by:

Poor Ring Zero. It never should have been born.

It’s the bastard progeny of the mega-successful Ring series. With the deliriously creepy Ring and the telekinetically explosive Ring 2 already out in circulation, the investors were crawling out of the television with sackfulls of cash wanting another in the series. But Ring 2 pretty much wraps up the plot. The solution? Crank out a prequel. Oh no, the Ring cycle just caught the George Lucas virus. We’ll have to amputate!

You seem, the writers thought it would be a good idea to take the Ring ghost and show how she got that way back when she was a nice girl. And to rewrite the back story until it makes even less sense than before, as if that’s possible. And to explain in boring detail everything which had been hinted at in the first two films. And instead of making a horror film instead making a soap opera set around an amateur theatre company. (Hey, what say we put on a show? Never mind that our leading lady just got her eyeballs poached by unseen supernatural forces at the first dress rehearsal, it must go on, right!). And when that plot ran out of its thimble-sized kettle of steam, to just keep adding characters and changing the plot and the tone in the hope that it just might get better.

Argh.

At best this film is mediocre. In fact, some scenes even rate a small mouse squeak on the creep-o-meter. But overall it’s a just one long mistake. I wish it had never been screened, because it delivers a fatal blow to the whole Ring experience; it is so far below the standard of Ring and Ring 2 it makes the series look a bit crap. And the worst part is, many people will assume it starts here, and watch this one first. If you are still somehow keen to see Ring anyway, then bad luck, because this prequel has ripped the cover off the deep dark well of Ring‘s secrets which make seeing the first film cold such a deliciously creepy experience.

Look, I could spend another 17 paragraphs bagging Ring 0, hell, I could even actually give you a proper synopsis or review of the thing, but I’ve already wasted ten bucks, an evening, and happy memories of Ring and Ring 2.

Argh.

0 Rings out of 10.
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