Critiquing a Media Critic

Rachel "Bunny" Meyer is a Texas native who started her YouTube vlog in 2010. The channel focused on her experiences with the paranormal, but has since flourished into a channel of many topics: fashion, makeup, hauls, "tea vlogs" and what I'll discuss here, trials of various infomercial products. Under the screen name Grav3yardgirl, Meyer has accumulated a fan base coined "The Swamp Family," just shy of 8 million subscribers.

Bunny appeals to a broad audience. "Judging by the comments on her videos, Bunny's down-to-earth personality and goofy sense of humor are what make her relatable and magnetic, quickly drawing viewers in," said Margot Peppers of Daily Mail. I can attest to this. Expect Bunny will come to your screen as a glam-girl or a "rock and roll garbage can," in the words of Meyer herself. Her videos have excellent production quality, but the star herself doesn't worry as much about her appearance.  This makes her videos engaging in the sense that she could easily just be a friend testing a product right in your living room! Bunny is highly personable because of her quirk and human error alike, both of which she doesn't edit out. She's not simply targeting the "girly-girl" audience, but one that welcomes humor as well as beauty and grungy fashion tips. 

In the series "Does This Thing Really Work?" Bunny tests popular "As Seen On TV" products as well as those which are popular or requested. As with any typical Bunny video, you'll get something along the lines of a disastrous trial and error process that leaves both the viewer and Bunny confused. Oftentimes, she'll have another go at the products as fans will always point out her obvious mistakes. You can expect every video to be within the 10-20 minute range, and presented in the following format:

DOES THIS THING REALLY WORK? 

- Video Introduction

- Product overview

- Instructions 

- Doubt and/or excitement

- Antics and product use

- This thing doesn't work (Most of the time)

- Doubt ("Tell me if I'm doing it wrong, but I don't think I am!")

- Video close (Like, Comment, Subscribe)

Hair Sucker - "Does This Thing Really Work?"

This is not the channel to visit if you're looking for a straight-forward tutorial. This is the channel to go to if you're looking to be entertained, if you need a pick-me-up,  or an awesome makeup tutorial! But don't expect anything different about the format of videos in other categories! Bunny's personality is the star of every episode in every series. This can be both beneficial and damaging to her content.

For the most part, I'm willing to stick with Bunny for the full duration simply for the entertainment factor. If I'm looking for an actual tutorial, I'm probably not going to go to Bunny. As stated before, her videos are long, and are more a showcase of her vibrant personality than tutorial. Also, she almost always fails at proper product usage. While her human-error is endearing, it can be both enlightening as well as gimmicky. Some instructions are unclear, but not as unclear as they always seem to Bunny. On the plus side, manufactures and consumers alike can take notes from the practicality of said products by viewing her videos. Users aren't always willing to invest the time into figuring a product out before diving in, like Bunny, despite countless, unnecessary attempts to get it right.

With 1200+ videos in her arsenal, Bunny clocks in as one of the highest earners on YouTube, drawing in anywhere from $44K to nearly $60k+ per month according to Social Blade. Last year she released her first cosmetic line with Tarte including "Swamp Queen" lip paints and pallets. Bunny utilizes social media platforms (Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Snapchat) to promote her products and videos as well as to engage with viewers. As long as Bunny produces relevant and genuine content, her popularity can only grow; despite her seemingly lack of: 

Just a joke! Check out Bunny's YouTube channel here: Grav3yardgirl. Check out the "Does This Thing Really Work?" playlist by clicking the title. 

Movie Review

Imagine it's a Saturday night in 2002, you're nine years old and on a family outing. Your father always let's you and your siblings pick the film, no matter the rating, and as a group you decide to watch a horror flick. After watching The Ring, you're scarred for life. You unplug your television every night for the next three years in fear a little girl about your age will come out and stare you to death. Yes, stare you to death. You harbor such an irrational fear of Samara Morgan and her well-climbing ways, but it's okay, you were only nine-years-old. 

Three years pass, and at twelve, you're on the brink of your teens. Nothing can scare you now. Right? You're already starting to overcome your fear of little girls and wells altogether. Wrong! Imagine it's another Saturday night, this time in 2005. To your complete and total dismay, your siblings have to see the sequel. Thus, The Ring 2 careens you into another 3-5 years of television unplugging, soap in your eyes during showers and intense staring into the dark at what you pray is your jacket hanging in the closet. By this point, you are forever going to fear the little girl you've outgrown. 

At the ripe, old age of twenty-four, you've become quite the horror fanatic. Nothing really scares you anymore. You've seen all the disturbing films and YouTube videos that your tolerance is above and beyond the norm. Maybe you've simply outgrown the genre, but likely, you're just highly desensitized. So, when you hear about sequel number three to the one film that left a scar so deep you still have a pep in your step when caught in the dark, you must go and see it.

On a Saturday in 2017, you go to the theater with very low expectations. Horror movies these days just stink, so you're hoping that childhood terror will be the catalyst for a horror movie experience you've yet to have again. But of course, you are severely disappointed. In fact, you find yourself on the verge of walking out not one, but many times. Rings was hands down one of the worst horror flicks to grace the silver screen. You've seen better B horror movies on Netflix.  It took approximately two hours to taint what was once a precious notion of absolute terror; despite Scary Movie 3's attempt to do that long ago. 

The Ring was the American interpretation of the Japanese film Ringu. The story was chilling and uncomplicated: family adopts baby girl, girl is evil, mother throws her down a well, girl survives for seven days, girl lives on through killer video tape and viewers will be subject to girl crawling out of their television to stare them to death. If this sounds complicated to you, you'll never get your head around the third installment to this franchise. The original starred talent like Naomi Watts as lead and Daveigh Chase as none other than the wicked Samara Morgan. Doesn't she look just adorable?

Daveigh Chase | Samara Morgan | Naomi Watts with Chase

This horror franchise relied solely on the age in which it was made. Today, we don't have VHS tapes. We don't have landlines. The 2005 sequel saw this arising issue and decided to stick to the backstory, but Rings took itself a little too seriously. Not only did the 2017 addition try to extend the backstory, but it made a reaching attempt to salvage what made it's successors so terrifying: the concept. What could be more frightening than the idea that our technology might be as damning as revolutionary? While I think it's a little far-fetched to attribute this ideal to such a film, at least The Ring was thought-provoking. The story was full of twists and suspense, however, all of our burning questions about Samara Morgan and her killer video tape were answered. There needn't be a second, and much less, a third. 

Rings' attempt to adapt this concept to modernized technology not only failed miserably, but it's attempt at expanding the Morgan family dynamic was just as bleak. It recycled every bit of terrifying imagery from the first, piggybacked on the plot of the second and made a mockery of the villain herself. I found myself rooting for her, hoping she would kill off the dense, uninspired main characters with their bland romance exploited by the writers merely to foreshadow the entire plot. The VHS was traded for file-sharing. It was just blatant sacrilege that the writers introduced a "video within a video" concept. This new video was "meant" for the main character. Although interlaced with the old all along, only she could see it. 

No. Get out of here with that. Samara isn't bias. She kills every one with the same tape. She doesn't discriminate. There's no telling how much work went into making the first. Just, no. 

Now, Samara can get you anywhere. There are multiple screens in our homes, in public places, even in our hands. This is a major issue to the story itself. Without a doubt, if the killer video made it's way to the internet (as it did in this film) it would be shared millions of times within a matter of hours. Phones would be ringing off the hook, but would people be dropping like flies? The whole concept is if you share it before the seven-day grace period, you're golden. Somehow, someway, this logic was unfounded in the film. While not all horror movies are allowed logic, as X wouldn't happen if Character A hadn't ran up the stairs instead of down, this is enough flawed logic to span at least 15 horror flicks. In fact, I was unsure if I was watching something from the Final Destination film franchise when the film opened.

                                           RINGS OPENING SCENE                           |              FINAL DESTINATION OPENING SCENE


This film received a 7% from Rotten Tomatoes and a 4.5/10 from IMDB. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone. Go watch the first movie, skip the second and pretend the third was never birthed into existence. If you're the type to go for the unsettling, brooding sort of horror, definitely give The Ring a chance. There's nothing like watching Samara climb out of the well for the very first time. It still haunts me to this day. It's a perfect blend of horror and storytelling through both sounds effects and cinematography. As for Rings, I'll give this movie props for only two things: it's clever marketing strategy, and this fraction-of-a-second sequence from the film. Both are pictured below:

After reading this, if you'd like to see the trailer, the links for each film in the franchise are below. Fair warning, the trailer for the film reviewed entails all the best parts. It is an inaccurate depiction of how good this film is not. 

Trailers:

The Ring

The Ring 2

Rings

Ringu (Japanese Original)