Paramount Green Lights Ring 3, Film Cynic Yawns

Okay, I will admit that despite how much I hate Hollywood remakes of Asian media out of principle, I liked Paramount's The Ring. Paramount's The Ring was based off the Japanese horror film Ringu and is considered one of the most successful remakes of Asian horror and brought forth a boom of progressively crappy Hollywood remakes of Asian horror films like The Eye, Shutter, and Dark Water. Now in a brilliant strategy-provided that jabbing forks in your eyes can also be considered brilliant-Paramount plans to bring forth a third movie of The Ring. The idea of a third installment combined with 3D has about as much going for it as a car with square wheels combined with a steamroller dropped on top of it. It just cannot go anywhere.

The first problem is the third movie of a series. If it is one unspoken trend that I will talk about, it is how the third movie of pretty much any movie series is usually the weakest movie. At that point the screenwriters are scraping barrels for fresh ideas and/or throwing everything they can in an attempt to appease fans. The result is usually a head-scratching unsatisfying end to the series that only gets worse from there. See Godfather III, Spiderman 3, Final Destination 3, the third Pirates of the Caribbean movie, and the Star Wars saga for examples. Back to the Future was a pretty good trilogy. The problem with The Ring 3 is that the writers pretty much scraped the barrel for ideas during The Ring 2 and had the horror, story, and atmosphere as stuffed bunny. What can possibly be expected for The Ring 3? What are the chances Samara will pop out of a TV screen this time around?

I already covered my dismissal of 3D as nothing more than an eyesore gimmick meant to milk a few extra dollars from the easily amused. Pretty much the only good use of 3D would be to have Samara pop out in front of her TV screen and into the audience. But since it is a shot everybody is expecting, it will be as surprising as opening a closet door with the killer lurking inside immediately after reading a sign taped to the door stating, "KILLER LURKING INSIDE!"

So in short, to hell with Ring 3. The only fear to expect is how many people will think this is an excellent original horror series.