Movie Review: The Ring 2 (2005)

The Ring Two (2005)

I wasn’t a huge fan of the original Ring, but when drawing comparison to its inept sequel, the first instalment of this franchise is a Ferrari to its younger sibling’s Skoda – that has been painted in bile yellow. Unfortunately, bad films sell, and this will no doubt shift tickets by the bucket-load based on the reputation of the first film. The insulting thing is that the film never even tries to make sense or give you anything remotely interesting or new to watch. It just walks around with the attitude that “I’m rubbish, and I don’t care that I’m rubbish.” This is something that I cannot forgive.

While the director of the Hollywood feature The Ring was no longer available for this sequel, the producers enlisted a replacement in the shape of Hideo Nakata, who directed the Japanese films on which the Hollywood version was based. These were of course Ringu, and Ringu 2.

It’s worth mentioning that while The Ring was based on Ringu, this sequel was not based on its Japanese counterpart. This may be one of the reasons why this installment is so dismal. A lot of Hollywood screenplay writers have brains the size of a grain of sand, and generally manage to botch things up when they are just copying Japanese screenplays, so letting them come up with their own story was always going to be a bad idea.
Despite directing the original Japanese films, Nakata can’t save this feature from being a shimmering fountain of awfulness. I strongly suspect that he was simply paid an exorbitant amount of money and given no creative licence at all. This is merely an assumption of course.

Regarding the plot, it helps a lot to have seen the first film but it’s certainly not necessary. The film opens with a teenage boy attempting to get a girl to watch “the video”. That’s right; the one that you must show to someone within a week or…you will die. Makes perfect sense. Unbeknownst to the boy, the girl closes her eyes and doesn’t watch, and therefore the boy dies, with his face turning green and his teeth falling out. Rachel (Naomi Watts) sees what has happened and knows it’s all a result of the tape. (At the end of the last film she made a copy to save herself and her son Aidan, as you do.)
Rachel and Aidan (Dorfman) have moved house since the first film, and have “started over” to use useless American terminology. Of course, why they have to move to a big creepy house when it’s just the two of them is anyone’s guess.
The screenwriters now decide to abandon the tape gimmick and go with the tried and tested ‘possessed child’ story. Aidan (David Dorfman) is now possessed by Samara, the creepy little girl who was drowned down a well by her mother, the girl who comes out of the TV to kill you. The rest of the film involves Rachel trying to save her son, and so needs to once again investigate the dead girls’ past.

If it sounds like it’s going over old ground, that’s because it is. The writers know that people will watch anything, and have decided that they can just do the same thing again and get away with it. Even the climactic scene is just a watered down version of the one in The Ring. There really is no difference other than it takes Rachel slightly less time to get out of the well this time. This film either tries something new which makes no sense, or remakes scenes from the first film.

Now, more negative. This is a film and plot with more holes than a Swiss Emmental cheese. First of all, the change of rule for the video curse needs to be addressed. Now you don’t die within seven days if you can get someone else to watch it in that time. Of course the central characters acknowledge this as if it was always like this.
Second, the tape is just done away with and Samara mysteriously realises that she can just possess Aidan. This girl sure is smart. She didn’t try that in the first place, but….
Third, after Aidan is in the hospital bed and the nurse commits “suicide”, how does he manage to get home? He is eight years old!
Fourth, the police don’t seem to catch up with Rachel, despite all the dead bodies linked to her son, how strange. Let’s just ignore all the corpses around us folks.

The most important objective a horror movie must fulfil is the incitement of fear. Indeed, despite all its many flaws, had it scared the audience in any way, it may have been forgiven. But there is merely the odd obligatory jump here and there, no more. The original Ring at least had some decent suspense and an intriguing plot of sorts, here it all seems stale and therefore loses any juice it might have had in the first outing. Added to this lack of fear is the endless clichés and pant-itchingly bad dialogue. They’ve stolen an entire scene from The Omen, there’s a completely ridiculous search for a key under rocks, and they’ve thrown a child’s musical box in the basement – with no point to the story at all!

Teeny boppers will no doubt love it, but that’s because they will love any horror film unconditionally because they think they’re seeing things they shouldn’t be allowed to see.

I’ve concluded that Hideo Nakata should have stayed at home, and this film should be made an example of. An example of just what the lovely people in Hollywood will do for money. No scares, no worthwhile story, just a cash-in of the most sadistic nature.

GRADE: D