A Review by Phil Calabro
2005, Dreamworks SKG, Dir. Hideo Nakata - Starring Naomi Watts, Simon Baker, David Dorfman, Elizabeth Perkins, Gary Cole, Sissy Spacek, Ryan Merriman, Emily VanCamp, Kelly Overton, James Lesure, Daveigh Chase, Kelly Stables, Cooper Thornton
When I've been writing about the typical horror movies that have come out recently, I continuously complain about how cheap and unoriginal the scares have become. But there is something that 'Boogeyman', ''Hide and Seek', and 'The Grudge' all have that allows them to trump 'The Ring Two' - at least those three are actually scary. I was blubbering and furious all at once when I walked out of this movie, upset at the fact that something so genuine and enjoyable as 'The Ring' could get such a crock of a sequel. It's beyond disappointing - it's embarassing to Hideo Nakata, the original director of the Japanese counterpart 'Ringu', it's a shame to Naomi Watts who could do nothing more than taunt our villain Samara with laughable one-liners, and it's a travesty to Sissy Spacek who - for the two minutes she's on screen - proves that she's got too much free time on her hands. 'The Ring Two' is a lame and tedious counterpart to a modern classic, that has wasted its budget and time to narrate an uninteresting story that has least bit to do with the actual videotape.
A little while after Rachel Keller (Watts) destroyed the apparent last copy of the dreadful videotape that killed people in seven days, a new copy turns up in the hands of two stupid teenagers (Merriman and VanCamp). The audience never really knows how the tape ended up in their hands, but at this point, it doesn't matter. As I told my friend while we were watching it, "it's a horror film, it doesn't require logic." Anyhow, the tape kills one teenager and leaves the other one traumatized. Rachel, who's moved to the same small town with her son Aidan (Dorfman), has hitched a job at a local paper and is shocked to find that Samara (Stables) is still out there. She investigates into the tape, but learns that Samara wants a new body to possess - that the one particular body she has chosen is Aidan's. In a struggle between the real world and the paranormal, Rachel races the clock to learn even more about Samara - who she learns was actually put up for adoption from her insane single mother Evelyn (Spacek). Meanwhile, a stiff psychologist Dr. Temple (Perkins) has barred Rachel from seeing Aidan after her boss Max (Baker) sends him to a hospital. Ok, that's a tad weird in writing, but when it's all pasted together, it makes more sense. Or not.
Naomi Watts is the whole Hollywood package - she's drop dead gorgeous, she's talented, and has discovered an excellent agent. But here we have something along the lines of her role in 'I Heart Huckabees'. Rachel Keller is our heroine, our character who's supposed to know more than anyone else in the movie. But she's so one-dimensional in the fact that she never puts enough effort to being scared enough. A few good gasps aren't enough for this round. She acts like she's never been in this game before, like 'The Ring' never existed in the first place. There's no feeling that she has superiority over Samara's creepiness at all - which makes her a rather obsolete heroine. David Dorfman isn't horrible, but he might as well just join the line-up of child actors who play roles in which they have a higher sense than their older counterparts. Looking silent and innocent all the time isn't going to land you a decent role anymore. And Sissy Spacek? Well, let's just say it looks like she walked into the filming without a costume change at all.
Coherency takes a long vacation in 'The Ring Two', featuring more unexplained plot elements than ever before. There's one that strikes me as the weirdest, and I noticed Roger Ebert made a point of mentioning this as well. Towards the beginning of the movie, Rachel and Aidan are driving down the road until a pack of crazy stags block the road and attack their Honda a la 'The Omen'. It packs a wallop in the 'jolt' category, it fails in the 'scary' category, and gets a 0.1 in 'sense' directory. It makes very little sense why the animals attacked, and we don't care for a while...until we see the piles of antlers in the basement of Samara's old house. What's the meaning of all this? Some sort of allegory? The audience never learns the reason. And as for the scares on the whole, 'Ring Two' doesn't seem to be interested in frightening anyone - almost as if director Nakata was trying to be insightful or something. 'The Ring Two' ruins two of the first's winning elements - the sequel doesn't involve the videotape whatsoever (just a 'starter' element), and the sequel has Samara talking in some stupid demonic voice. What a complete load of bull.
'The Ring Two' is a drab, uneventful two hours based around a great idea, but draws rings around it. So far, it has hit the number one spot as the most disappointing sequel of 2005, and may just end up on my worst of the year list. On a lighter note - halfway through the movie, I realized that the girl from 'The Grudge' should just pop up and break the silence with her gurgling sound effects. That would've at least lightened the mood.
