Movie Review

The Ring Two

The first installment of The Ring (B+) caught many people by surprise. The film was intelligently told and was creepy, and the filmmakers proved that what you don?t show can be more powerful. One of its pleasures was that the story was basically told backwards, as the viewer only knew what the characters knew. The film relied on the intelligence of the audience and didn?t speak down to them, and allowed viewers to put the pieces together as the character did. But unfortunately, there is no such luck with the obligatory sequel, The Ring Two.

The Ring Two has a few good ideas, but it?s so repetitive and slow that those ideas get overshadowed by a lot of nothing. I was entertained for the first half, as the tone worked on a mild level even though the story was clich?. After a while, though, the story just treads along with very little to digest ? it gets redundant, and characters talk very slowly, creating the illusion of an eerie mood. We?re handed pieces of the puzzle, but the pieces are so straightforward that there isn?t much of a mystery to figure out. The film is told as if we?re constantly in suspense, but the only fools are the filmmakers; pieces eventually add up, only to spawn the reaction, ?Um?duh??

The film opens in the same manner as the first installment. Two teenagers ? a guy and a girl ? are home alone at night and the guy wants to show her an unbelievable tape. She?s reluctant to watch it and just wants to fool around, but he forces her to watch it while he goes into another room. He evidently wants her killed, but when he returns to the room, not everything went as planned, and he ends up being the one taken by that creepy little girl out of the well.

Reporter Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) hears about the incident and realizes how similar it is to the events she had dealt with. It is obvious something funky is going on again, and she wants to be on top of the mystery. Soon, her son gets unusually sick, and there is suspicion that Samara ? that creepy girl out of the well ? has something to do with it. He takes on odd capabilities, which makes us wonder just how much power Samara has.

There is barely anything in this story that we don?t already know. And the new information has very little impact, as nothing is delved into properly in order to care. The film acts as if it?s new turf to us, but it?s as conventional as your average sequel. We?re always steps ahead, which makes us slap ourselves in astonishment when characters have an epiphany over something that we figured out twenty minutes ago. I was reminded of the remake of The Haunting (C+), as neither film was as creepy as they appeared, and some of the characters? wild reactions to incidents made you laugh.

Gore Verbinski directed the first installment with a solid sensibility of the genre. The film had a tone that was captivating and tense, the soundtrack was consistently empowering, and the performances were in league with those of The Sixth Sense (B+). He also was behind a script that was different from the norm and had original ideas, which propelled his unique vision.

The Ring Two was directed by Hideo Nakata, who was behind the Japanese version of The Ring, entitled Ringu (C+). There are moments when Nakata?s tone works quite well, but too often he uses conventions that The Ring was praised for avoiding. Rooms suddenly go dark or a noise is heard upstairs, which propels a character to check out the perimeters. Nakata didn?t write any of these clich?-ridden circumstances, but he gives in to the loud sound effects that support cheap jumps, and the quick ?surprise? shot of the source. The first edition of The Ring wasn?t about the surprise shots, and there were very few ? it made people uncomfortable by what they didn?t see.

Sequels like this can be irritating because the setup from the original was quite good, and the writer (Ehren Kruger) even came back, which isn?t always the case. You?d think that someone of his talent (despite that he also wrote Scream 3, Imposter, and Reindeer Games) would realize that he?s not living up to potential, and either he didn?t care or is living in a bubble. The Ring probably took him longer to write due to the originality, and Ring Two gives off the impression that it was written fairly quickly. Movies like this make wannabe filmmakers crave Hollywood even more: they want the keys to the kingdom so they can finally show these filmmakers how the process should be done.

Lee's Grade: C+

A	0.4%
B	30.0%
C	61.7%
D	8.0%
F	0.0%