Rings is the newest addition to the Ring series, one of the most famous examples of a Japanese horror classic remade for American audiences. The premise revolves around a cursed videotape, haunted by the spirit of a girl named Samara, that supposedly kills anyone who watches it within seven days of the initial viewing. To escape your fate, you must make a copy of the tape and send it to someone else, thus passing on the curse to the next viewer. Rings features Matilda Lutz, an Italian model and actress, and Alex Roe, an English actor, as the leads Julia and Holt, respectively. It was released in theaters Feb. 3, bringing in $13 million opening weekend to mostly low reviews.

It’s never clearly stated what Rings is, exactly: is it a reboot, a remake, or just an add-on to the original Ring? The terror begins almost straight away, with a plane crash containing two people who had watched the doomed tape. Some years pass, and a VCR belonging to one of the ill-fated passengers is picked up by a professor, Gabriel. He fixes it and finds the videotape still inside. Meanwhile, the protagonist couple, Julia and Holt, are saying their goodbyes, as Holt is leaving for college. Several weeks go by with the two Skyping on and off, until Holt disappears for a few days, refusing to answer the phone or text messages. Julia goes to find him and discovers that Holt has been taking part in an experiment conducted by Gabriel, who had been trying to use the tape’s phenomenon to prove the existence of the soul. From there, they discover that there is more to the tape than just scary imagery; it has a dark past that needs to be unearthed.

Even as a standalone film, Rings is a flop. Storywise, it hops to and from plot points, never fully reinforcing any of them into something worth caring about. While the ideas could have made for a fascinating tale, the script fails to follow through with any of them, leaving far more to be desired. For a movie that’s almost two hours, I could feel no connection with the characters. They were flat, each with only a handful of traits that were relatable. The only one that felt even remotely human was Gabriel. However, that’s not to say the entire show was terrible, although the bar is pretty low at this point. In terms of cinematography, Rings succeeds in making the scare scenes genuinely creepy. And at the very least, they didn’t rely on jump-scares to make the audience fearful. It does fit into the genre of psychological horror rather well.

As much as I want to give this a chance, I’d have to advise moviegoers to pass over Rings. For every single thing it does right, there are two others that go wrong. Horror movies generally aren’t too concerned with plot or character development, but these are things that make any movie something worth caring about. Rings lacks all of these, and therefore, it just isn’t worth bothering with. On a scale of 10, I’d have to rate this at a 3.