Rooster Teeth’s hit show, RWBY, historically has had problems with pacing, storytelling, and its animation. Volume three had remedied many of these problems with an incredible season that had a real impact. However, volume four has returned to its past problems with pacing and storytelling, but in new aspects. While previous volumes had characters that felt too flat, this new volume tried a bit too much with its characters spread throughout the world of Remnant.
Adaptions of Japanese horror films seem to be a popular trend in American media, especially in the early 2000’s. A notable amount of these titles appeared in American theaters to varying amounts of success, including The Grudge (2004), Pulse (2006), and One Missed Call (2008). With a few exceptions, most of these American adaptions are far less inspired than their Japanese counterparts, and as a result, many are forgotten shortly after their release. The film that started this trend of American re-interpretations of Japanese horror films, The Ring (2002), is one of the exceptions. Based off of the Japanese film Ringu (1998), The Ring was met with mostly favorable reviews and remains a title that is still heavily recommend by horror fans. While the American version of the The Ring was followed by both a short film and sequel, these titles have remained fairly unpopular among the general movie-going public and have been met with harsh scrutiny amongst critics. This year’s newest addition to the franchise, Rings, falls victim to the same old clichés that had plagued earlier entries in the franchise and ignores the factors that had made the original film a hit. Thus, Rings makes for a drawn out rather than horrific film viewing experience.
