The Ring Two

First you see the Ring... then you see the sequel
As a rule, sequels are terrible. And "The Ring Two" is not so much terrible as it is ordinary. It's graced with an outstanding performance by Naomi Watts and some truly creepy scenes, but it lacks the visceral direction of the first movie. In short, it's a sequel.

As the story opens, we see a slimy-looking boy tricking his girlfriend into watching (drumroll please) The Tape (anyone who saw the short film "Rings" will see the backdrop). As we know from "The Ring," if you get someone else doomed by the tape, you get to live and they die. But things don't turn out so well for the boy. Meanwhile, Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) is fleeing to a rural town with her son Aidan (David Dorfman). They thought they had managed to destroy the evil Samara's curse, but of course they were wrong.

And no sooner have they settled down, than Rachel finds signs of Samara's presence. A young boy has died inexplicably, left with a hideous facial deformity. When Rachel confirms that it was...

"Meh". That can literally be a review
After I saw the film, I checked out the special features and there was the short film "Rings" so I checked it out and oddly enough I jumped twice which the main film didn't do. We have a problem here then. At least the first one was a bit creepy, here it's kind of been neutered, as if it's supposed to be scary but we kind of matured past it maybe.

6 months after the events from the first film, Rachel and her son Aidan have moved away from the city to a small town. Hoping to be forever ridden of Samara, they take up residence and Rachel becomes part of a newspaper while Aidan's becoming a photography enthusiast. That changes when a boy's body is found with a severely dislocated jaw. Looks like Samara's back, only she's got a plan this time, to take over Aidan.

2 scenes stick out from the first one: Amber Tamblyn's body in the closet and of course the TV scene. Here? It's a bunch of badly animated deer attacking a car. Yes that's right, deer. First, why Samara...

The Special Feature
I'm not going to waste your time trashing the film of exposing plot points. Instead I hope to bridge a gap that reviews seem to be leaving out.

All the reviews of the movie center on "how bad it is," but there's a little tasty treat mixed up in the DvD that not many people are talking about. Originally released as "Rings," a gap to bridge the span between movies, there's a short tale that spans the two and tells its watcher about "Ring Groups" that begin popping up when people hear about the video. Thrill-seekers, wanting to know what they'll find, begin watching the tapes and recording everything they see, showcasing the bizarre events that everyone else experiences. As an audience we tag along with one of these groups, and their attempts to document the oddities like we've seen in the first Ring movie.

And its frightening, even if its short.

As for the movie, it has some portions of it that are enlightening, some that are disappointing, and a theme...

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