Starring Johnny Galecki, Matilda Anna Ingrid Lutz, Alex Roe, Aimee Teegarden and Vincent D’Onofrio

Story by David Loucka and Jacob Estes; screenplay by David Loucka and Jacob Estes and Akiva Goldsman

Directed by F. Javier Gutierrez

Samara is back… and this time she’s going viral.

The idea behind the Ring franchise should be pretty much hardwired into any fan of the genre. However that doesn’t stop this very belated sequel to the English language versions spending quite a bit of its first act explaining it in considerable detail, as a professor uses the original VHS tape from which the curse sprang as the basis for some experiments that are unwise, to say the least.

That’s the cue for various spooky things to happen, some of which are considerably less terrifying than director Gutierrez obviously hoped for. The scares are hampered by some less than stellar acting and dialogue even when the story does take something of an unexpected turn and our heroes go off to investigate a small town That Holds The Secret of Samara. (There’s a couple of points where you regret the loss of intertitles in movies – the overuse of capitals would be appropriate here.)

The Blu-ray release has a few extras: a 12 and a half minute mini-feature charts the franchise, with a look at the style of the latest version; there’s a nine minute piece on Samara herself; an instantly forgettable six minute discussion of scary scenes; and eighteen minutes of deleted and alternate scenes, including a different ending.

Verdict: It looks and sounds good on Blu-ray, but this is very much an unnecessary coda to the Ring franchise. 3/10

Paul Simpson