Movie Review: The Ring 2

The Ring 2 (2005) 

Directed by Hideo Nakata

Written by Ehren Kruger 

Starring Naomi Watts, Simon Baker, David Dorfman, Elizabeth Perkins, Gary Cole and Sissy Spacek 

Release Date March 18th 2005 

Published March 17th, 2005 

When The Ring was released in 2002 and became a nationwide sensation with 129 million in box office sales and there was no doubt that there would be a sequel.  Hell, the Japanese version of the film spawned multiple sequels so there was even material from which to borrow for a new movie if necessary.  The real question was whether the story they told in the sequel would matter to viewers, not that it mattered much to marketers who had the poster mocked and approved on The Ring's second weekend atop the box office. Unfortunately there is no more story worth telling, or if there is the producers of Ring Two failed to locate it.

A quick recap of the original concept: The Ring was founded on the idea of a crazy looking videotape that, when viewed, left the viewer with seven days to live. A girl trapped in a well used the supernatural powers of the videotape to escape and claim anyone who watched the tape. Naomi Watts starred in The Ring as a journalist named Rachel who saw the tape while searching out a story about the urban legend surrounding it, a legend that may have claimed the life of her young niece.

Rachel is back in Ring Two with her preternaturally creepy son Aiden (David Dorfman). The two have escaped the tape's supernatural curse by running off to a small town somewhere in Oregon where Rachel has taken a job as a reporter for a small town paper run by Max (Simon Baker). How location could prevent a supernatural being from finding victims is a logical question that the film fails to address, among many other failures in logic and works of luck and chance that would be forgivable were they not so numerous.

Unfortunately for Rachel and Aiden, the tape has been traveling with a new legend attached to it. Teens are passing it around under the pretense that if you can get someone else to watch after you the curse is transferred from you to them. This theory fails a teenager who tries to pass it off on an unsuspecting girl. This is in the opening ten minutes and for some reason is the last time in the film we will hear about the killer video.

From there the film changes the supernatural elements, losing the videotape and randomly deciding that Samara, the killer chick in the video, can attack by possessing Aiden, Exorcist style. This leads Rachel back to that well in the basement of Samara's house and to Samara's real mother, an institutionalized woman played by Sissy Spacek. None of this leads to any satisfying conclusion though to the film's credit there is no overt set up for another sequel.

Ring 2 is shockingly bad. Truly shocking considering the talent of director Hideo Tanaka whose original Ringu is terrifically stylish and suspenseful. Ring director Gore Verbinski skated by in the original by being visually inventive and taking advantage of the films unique premise. Ring 2 abandons the original premise and even much of the strong visual aspects, replacing them with what amounts to a series of rip-offs of other horror movies.

Ring 2 is the perfect example of what I have called 'sequelitis.' It's a film that exists solely as a concept, a poster, a series of demographic marketing numbers and never anything resembling a real film.