10 Movies From 2017 That Died At The US Box Office
3. Rings
US Box Office: $27,793,018
Desperate to launch a new horror franchise after the Paranormal Activity series ran its course, Paramount decided that the future lay in another instalment in this unremarkable series (which began during the J-horror craze of the early 2000s).
Rings opens with what seems like a Scary Movie gag, only it’s played dead straight. On a late night flight, a woman tries to calm a fellow passenger who starts telling her about “that videotape that kills you after you watch it” (what is this, 1998?) Curiously for a young fellow, he somehow managed to find a VCR and watched the tape, which means he has seven days to live and his time runs out right now.
Faster than you can say, “What a hokey opening!”, images from the videotape start playing on the cockpit screens while black sludge mysteriously seeps from under the cabin door, and then….well, then the narrative jumps forward two years for a dull story about Professor Johnny Galecki, who’s started some kind of cult to protect himself from the videotape curse.