The Ring Two

Jumping through hoops: It's the usual obstacles in tired sequel The Ring Two

By Mike Prevatt

Don't even act surprised that Dreamworks has churned out a sequel to its 2002 spook hit The Ring. The only movie genre more predisposed to sequels than children's animated flicks is a horror film, and anyone who could at least sign his name to an SAT answer sheet knew, given the ending of the first installment, that another was inevitable. What should come into question is how the filmmakers decided to continue the franchise.

Instead of basing this follow-up on its Japanese equivalent--The Ring is the American version of Hideo Nakata's popular 1998 flick Ringu, which spawned two sequels--or finding a new family to torment and cleaning the slate, producers Walter F. Parkes and Laurie MacDonald and screenwriter Ehren Kruger (all aboard for the first Ring) have decided to err on the side of box office precaution and keep things as familiar and close to the predecessor's foundation as possible. This, despite hiring on Nakata for his American directorial debut--a wasted strategy, seeing how it feels less like his auteurship and more like a studio rehashing.

The Ring Two begins six months after the first one left off. Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) and her son Aidan (David Dorfman) have decided to pick up and move from Seattle to Astoria, Portland, a smaller community that would seem out of the reach of evil--namely, Samara, the merciless ghost who maimed onlookers from a videotaped film (think a cross between Regan from The Exorcist and Amy Lee from goth-pop group Evanescence).

But it's not. After investigating the all-too-familiar death of a local teen, Rachel, a reporter, finds copies of the tape. She doesn't even have time to react before Samara is off haunting her and Aidan, who grows very sick from what seems to be trauma, but turns out to be the evil ghost possessing him. Rachel is presented with a dilemma--how to rid the world of Samara without killing her own son, or having to play mother to the murderous banshee.

There are notable differences, but not for the better. Where the first Ring was an exercise in building tension and well-constructed plot twists that kept you guessing, the sequel relies on several shrill scare tactics aimed to provoke audience shrieking, as well as an underdeveloped story that's not absorbing enough to draw you in. Everything now involves a quicker payoff, and the experience just isn't as satisfying, though often it is scarier.

Nakata didn't go to great lengths to differentiate his film visually from the first Ring, directed by Gore Verbinski (Pirates of the Caribbean), namely because he doesn't seem to try. Verbinski used a lot of quick edits, twitchy effects and static splicing to recreate the videocassette-watching effect. Nakata doesn't bother with that, but he does keep the contents of the video exactly the same, including how Samara emerges from inside the movie/television screen. This breeds predictability (a surefire horror flick kiss of death). Furthermore, aside from some trickery with upward-falling water, Nakata doesn't seem to create an original aesthetic identity for the film.

The cast's performances rarely hit the middle of the dramatic spectrum. Watts stiffly phones in the performance; she has none of the fight-or-flight spirit she wielded in the first Ring. On the other, Dorfman could just be the creepiest figure here, mirroring the direct diction of The Sixth Sense's Haley Joel Osment and the zombified deterioration of Elijah Wood's Frodo Baggins throughout the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Sissy Spacek has a cameo as an institutionalized mother, and it's too minor to resonate.

Though the rapid succession of frights in the first half or so of The Ring Two keep you engrossed, the rest of the film is a letdown. An infusion of outsider inventiveness would help ensure The Ring doesn't fall into the same trap of other thriller franchises.