March 15th, 2005

Rachel Keller: Naomi Watts
Max Rourke: Simon Baker
Aiden Keller: David Dorfman
Evelyn: Sissy Spacek
 

Directed by Hideo Nakata.
Written by Ehren Kruger.
Rated PG-13.

It seemed like the ringleaders behind the original The Ring made the right decisions in recruiting for The Ring Two.  They re-hired the scripter of the original Ring, Ehren Krueger, a writer who knows how to goose the audience with shocking moments.  Also, replacing Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Carribbean) they tapped Hideo Nakata, the director of the original Japanese Ringu and Ringu 2.  That maneuver seemed to work with The Grudge - Takashi Shimizu was able to make a creepy Hollywood carbon copy of his original Japanese Grudge.  But The Ring Two not only fails to live up to the original, it forgets what made the original so disturbing.

The sequel starts off promising.  At the end of the original, we learn that the only way to survive a deadly videotape is to make a copy.  In The Ring Two, copies of the tape are turning up in VCRs across the Pacific Northwest.  Yet people are starting to figure out the loopholes in the curse.  The movie opens with a young man coercing his girlfriend to watch his copy of the tape – only because friends told him that he won’t be killed by ghost-girl Samara if he gets someone else to watch the tape first.  You’re probably thinking to yourself, “more tapes, more terror,” right?

Wrong.  Rachel (Naomi Watts returning to her role from the original) escapes the big-city life of Seattle, to settle in small town Astoria, Oregon with her son Aiden, played again by David Dorfman.  When Samara claims another victim right in Astoria, Rachel finds the copy and burns it, hoping to be rid of Samara for good.  But of course, there’s an unexpected turn of events. 

At this point, the movie also veers into baffling and disappointing directions.  Rather than upping the scare ante from The Ring, Ring Two delivers only milder thrills and a listless plot.  Ring Two ignores all of the particulars that made the original so riveting.  The most egregious misstep of Ring Two is modifying Samara from a relentless, vengeful soul-sucker into a mischievous sprite who’s apparently just lonely and looking for some familial relations. 

The Ring Two wants to dig deeper into Samara’s past.  Rachel heads back to Samara’s home and chats with people who knew Samara’s family.  This is always a bad idea in horror sequels - trying to figure out what went wrong in the killer’s family history.  Who cares?  We learned so much about Freddy Kruger’s family history in the Nightmare on Elm Street sequels, that by the millionth sequel, he seemed more like our cranky Uncle Freddy than the merciless child killer he was in the original. 

But what’s worse is the filmmakers drop the whole videotape premise.  There’s a motif of televisions, static, and reflective surfaces, but not once do we get that chilling set-up of someone watching the video, and then getting the call warning that they only have seven days to live.  In the original, what was scarier than watching the same video footage as the characters, knowing they were goners and you were safe because of the barrier between the movie world and the real world, and then seeing that barrier terrifyingly gone in the last scene?  But rather than delivering more of that dread, The Ring Two detours into mother-child dysfunction, child abuse accusations, and sadistic deer.  (I’m not kidding about the deer - not only is the subplot ridiculous, but we’ve another reminder that we’re a LONG way from convincing CGI mammals.)

Perhaps it was a mistake to re-hire Ringu’s original director.  The main problem seems to be the slavish adaptation of the original Japanese Ringu 2.  That movie seemed outdated when it was released in 1999.  I mean, a cursed videotape?  It worked in the first film because it fed off our fear of our global information era in which, even in the privacy of our homes, we can’t escape the constant bombardment of technology-based evil, like computer viruses and  telemarketers.  The Ring Two should have made the transfer from videotape to other forms of media.  Imagine if Samara had her own pop-up ad or if she controlled your TiVo.