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). 

DVD/Movie Review: The Ring

 

The Ring is a 2002 American adaptation of a Japanese horror film starring Naomi Watts, Aidan Keller, Davegh Chase, and Brian Cox.  It starts out with an almost urban legend kind of feel. We learn in the very beginning that there is a VHS tape out there that, if you watch it, you receive a phone call with a cryptic message "7 days", and exactly 7 days later, the viewer dies. The main character's (Rachel, played by Naomi Watts) niece dies at the beginning of the movie, and Rachel begins investigating her death. In the process, Rachel watches the tape, and the movie then becomes a race against time to save herself, her ex-husband, and her son.

The movie is much more a psychological thriller than a slasher. There is very little in the way of gore in the movie, it is all surprise and suspense. Most of the movie is trying to figure out the back story of the images that play out on the tape and piece together what happened. It is not really a movie that you can have on in the background and get what is going on. You do have to pay pretty close attention to what is going on after it gets going. So if you are not into those kinds of movies, you will probably not like this one. Of course, some purists think that the original Japanese movie is far better and that this one should not have even been made. If you have never seen the Japanese version of the movie and have no prior frame of reference, then that fact is probably not going to bother you.

I am not sure that the version of the DVD I have even exists anymore, so I am not sure that the extras on my version (which do not amount to much, just a short featurette that functions as almost a compilation of deleted scenes that fill in some of the gaps of the story) and trailers for other movies apply to what is out there now. Since you can stream it online, I am not sure if it is a must-own on DVD or Blu-ray, but if you like extras, you may want to do some investigating about what is out there on the various versions. As is the case with any movie, whether you like it or not is totally subjective. It is definitely a smarter horror movie, in the sense that you can even call it a horror movie. It is much better than the teen-based horror films that were coming out in the late 90s and early 2000s that were not Scream. If you like smart, suspenseful, and kind of creepy movies, this is definitely worth giving a shot.