New sequel to horror hit The Ring has one major flaw

A scene from the third film in The Ring franchise moves away from VHS tapes and instead uses YouTube.

More than a decade after the last outing, a new instalment in the popular horror franchise The Ring will hit cinemas later this year.

The trailer for the new film, titled Rings, is a bit of a messy affair, packing a whole lot of scares into its two-and-a-half-minutes.

But how to update the central premise of The Ring for a 2016 audience?

Remember, in the first two films - released in 2002 and 2005 - the deathly curse of "the ring" was transmitted once characters watched a haunted VHS tape.

There was a certain suspense inherent in the act, as each character would gingerly put the tape in the machine, the TV would flicker to life, and a series of bizarre, grisly images would flash across the screen, consigning the watcher to certain death within seven days.

Video tapes were something of an anachronism in the early noughties, but in 2016, most of Rings' target audience - fright-happy teens - wouldn't even know what they are.

So this time around, the haunted video is transmitted by ... A SPOOOOOOOKY EMAILED YOUTUBE LINK.

It just doesn't have quite the same deathly romance of the haunted VHS, does it?

Weirdly, having watched the spooky-scary-Mp4 file, the characters then receive the iconic "Seven days" death call - on a landline. A landline with a cord to boot.

Naomi Watts, who starred in the first two Hollywood adaptations of the Japanese franchise, does not return for this third outing - in her place, a largely unknown cast of actors ready to get literally scared to death.

The film will hit cinemas on October 28.