The Ring Two

Hideo Nakata, the director of the Japanese Ringu films that in large part sparked the American craze for Asian ghost movies, is at the helm for the sequel to The Ring (which was directed by the fantastic Gore Verbinski). As was the case when U.S. movie studios tried to recreate the magic by hiring the director of Ju-On: The Grudge to helm the American remake, The Grudge, results are extremely mixed.

The Ring Two is a pretty, visually striking and often unsettling, creepy supernatural thriller. It is also a nearly incomprehensible, convoluted mess that makes very little sense.

Naomi Watts reprises her role of Rachel Keller, the reporter from the first film who uncovered the secret of the deadly videotape. In that movie, the premise was built around a haunted short film that killed you seven days after you watched it. The sequel opens six months after the vengeful ghost, Samara (Daviegh Chase), has been seemingly thwarted. Rachel has moved from the big city and taken a job at a small town newspaper where she hopes that she and her young son Aidan (David Dorfman) can start a new life and put all the terror-on-tape behind them.

Her hopes are demolished when a local teenager is found dead in front of his TV set, seven days after he watched a mysterious, unmarked videotape. As it turns out, another side of Samara (now played by Kelly Stables) wasn’t thwarted at all, and fear comes full circle: she has her deadly sights set on Aidan. Horror clichés (Japanese ones, and American ones) ensue.

I saw Ringu and thought it was all right (though unnecessarily sexist); it had some interesting storylines that unfortunately weren’t adapted into the U.S. version. But I also liked how the remake put a different twist on the tale of terror (I mean, why do a remake if you’re going to do the exact same movie?) and I thought it was a lot more cohesive, exciting, scary, and better-acted and better-directed.

So a melding of Ringu (Nakata) and The Ring (Watts, Dorfman) is undeniably interesting from a curiosity standpoint. As I said, it’s visually artistic and some of the scare scenes are memorable. The acting is good (I’m thrilled to see Gary Cole in anything, and I love Sissy Spacek Ethough both are miscast and underused), but the script and direction are ambivalent at best. Swapping the horses from the first movie for deer (the audience laughed out loud here), it plays out like a “revenge of RudolphEspoof. In addition to that, unnecessarily rehashing several things from the first movie (why would Rachel go back and visit people from Samara’s past again?), only adds to the consternation.

If you don’t mind style over substance, then you might find The Ring Two somewhat engaging. If not, then wait for it to come out on videotape.

Reviewed by Staci Layne Wilson