Movie Reviews

I had hoped that the sequel to Gore Verbinski's The Ring would be better than this. Naomi Watts (one of my favourite actresses) returns as Rachel, the same role she played in the original, and David Dorfman returns as Rachel's son Aidan (though I found him a bit annoying in this movie). The director this time is Hideo Nakata, director of the original Japanese version of Ringu.

Unfortunately, the sequel lacks most of the intriguing plot and atmosphere that made me like the original so much, and tries to make up for it with additional "jump scares". Sure, I jumped out of my seat a bit, but each time afterwards I found myself resenting those scenes for being cheap and uninspired ways to 'scare' an audience (though I'll admit that one "jump scare" involving a body-bag was pretty effective).

It's much harder for a horror film to be scary without resorting to cheap scares, but the original did it quite well. The sequel lamely attempts to recreate one of the creepier scenes from the original, substituting a small herd of elk for the single horse featured in the first movie, but the recreation comes across as silly, more than anything. Especially so considering the heavy use of CGI in that scene, as well as in another CGI-intense bathwater scene that fails miserably in being even remotely scary (no matter what, I just don't think CGI bathwater floating in mid-air will ever be scary).

The Ring Two redeems itself a little bit with a super creepy climax involving a particularly important characters' attempted ascent out of a well. But this scene just wasn't enough to make the whole film seem like a half-hearted attempt to cash-in on the success of the original.