DVD/Movie Review: The Ring 2

 

The Ring Two is the 2005 sequel to 2002's horror/thriller, The Ring. The movie is directed by Hideo Nakata and brings back Naomi Watts and David Dorfman from the original movie. Kelly Stables takes over the role of Samara, but they do use archived footage of Daveigh Chase, who played Samara in the first movie. The movie also includes Simon Baker, Sissy Spacek, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Elizabeth Perkins, Gary Cole, and Emily Van Camp. The movie is set about six months after the events of the first movie, in which Rachel (played by Naomi Watts) made a copy of the tape in order to keep her son Aiden alive. Rachel then relocates to Oregon with Aiden to start a new life. However, the tape is still out there, and through a murder at the beginning of the movie, Samara discovers their whereabouts and takes over Aiden's body. The rest of the movie revolves around Rachel trying to free Aiden from Samara's influence.

The DVD extras include a few behind-the-scenes featurettes, and the short film called Rings, which was meant to bridge the gap between the two movies. It shows the consequences of the tape's continued existence and how teenagers were forming rings to see how many of the 7 days they could hold out before making a copy for another person to watch. All in all, there is enough there that if you like to go through the extra materials you will be satisfied. The movie, as most horror/thriller movie sequels are, is not great. It does, however, bring the story to a stronger conclusion, given how the first movie was left somewhat open (although another movie has been made without Watt's involvement). The acting was about on par with the first movie, and Naomi Watts, as the movie's lead, was good at playing Rachel. The overall story was just weaker, there was far less of a puzzle to put together, and the 7-day time frame element (and thus, much of the suspense) from the first movie was missing from this one. While it is not as good as the first movie, it is still worth the time to watch if you enjoyed the first movie (or just generally like non-slasher horror movies or psychological thrillers).