Directed by Hideo Nakata
Written by Ehren Kruger
Based on the Novel Ringu by Kôji Suzuki and the screenplay Ringu by Hiroshi Takahashi
Produced by Laurie MacDonald and Walter F. Parkes
Music by Henning Lohnen and Martin Tillman
Music Themes by Hans Zimmer
Cinematography by Gabriel Beristain
Edited by Michael N. Knue
Production Design by James D. Bissel
Costumes by Wendy Chuck

Cast
Namoi Watts (Rachel Keller)
Simon Baker (Max Rourke)
David Dorfman (Aidan Keller)
Elizabeth Perkins (Dr. Emma Temple)
Gary Cole (Martin Savide)
Sissy Spacek (Evelyn)
Kelly Stables (Evil Samara)

The tagline for The Ring Two fearfully announces that “terror comes full circle.” Which apparently means that we’re just going to have to watch the plot of the first movie all over again. And in the opening scene, where two teenagers alone in a house toy around with the famous cursed videotape from The Ring (2002), it does look as if a straight re-tread sequel is a-comin’ at us. The only difference is that instead of two girls talking about the urban legend of the videotape that kills you a week after you watch it, we have a boy and girl on the verge of necking…but first, there’s this tape he really wants her to watch… (I guess not all teen boys have their minds on sex.)

But The Ring Two quickly disposes of the killer VHS tape idea. Rachel Keller, the heroine from the first movie, destroys the offending tape so that the evil ghost of Samara who created the video can’t chase her to the small Oregon city of Astoria where she and her son Aidan have relocated so they can start their lives over. Getting rid of the concept of the killer videotape is just as well, since VCR technology has started its own slide into the grave, and Samara would eventually have to branch out into DVDs or at least pay-per-view in order to kill people. But without the device from the first movie, The Ring Two has to scratch around for something to do. It decides to turn into a “possession” film. Samara starts manifesting herself in the same ways she did before before: gushing water, flies, images from pretentious student films, and bad television reception. Rachel begins wandering around aimlessly, trying to solve the mystery of Samara (wait, wasn’t that solved in the last movie?) before the ghost with the world’s flattest hairdo can possess Aidan and do bad stuff. Sorry, that’s about as clear as it gets.

Considering how eerie and genuinely bleak the original Ring was—certainly one of the best big-budget horror films of the last few years—this sequel is depressingly short on both atmosphere and terror. Strangely, the director at the helm, Hideo Nakata, should have a good idea of how to dig deep in the mythos and horror of The Ring, since he directed Ringu, the 1998 Japanese film that started it all. He also directed Ringu 2, the second sequel to Ringu (please don’t ask, this gets confusing), but Nakata seems to have no idea what to do here. It’s sad when someone like Gore Vebrinski, who directed The Ring, shows you up on a movie series that you created.

Some of the fright moments actually come across as incredibly funny. A startling visual of all the water in a bathroom flowing upwards turns into a Wiley E. Coyote gag when it all comes crashing down again. And the scene where a herd of elk attack Rachel’s car has to be seen to be believed. Did Nakata think this would scare anyone? Bambi trying to bash in somebody’s windshield? It looks like footage left on the cutting room floor of Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle.

In between the sporadic attempts to scare up some cheap gasps from the audience, so little happens in The Ring Two that you have to wonder if the Ice Age has returned and frozen all the actors. The story moves with a listlessness that almost turns maddening. An early scene at a fair in Astoria limps on for what seems like half an hour, with exchanges between minor characters that do nothing for the story. (It does give DreamWorks an excuse to do some product placement for themselves, since the local used video vendor seems to only carry DreamWorks movies.) The performances are all perfunctory, and I would imagine that Nakata’s unfamiliarity with English contributed to the general malaise. Scene after scene has characters staring blankly at the floor and refusing to talk. David Dorfman gets it the worst: I can’t tell if his performance as young Aidan is a rotten one or if he was simply directed to give no performance at all. Gary Cole (best known for his turn in Office Space) pops in briefly to do his overeager Joe-average comic bit and seems bizarrely out of place. The film’s one casting coup, getting horror movie icon Sissy Spacek (from Carrie) to appear as Samara’s institutionalized biological mother, contributes very little. Spacek appears in a single scene to stutter (slowly) some nonsense designed to eventually tie up the plot strands at the finale.

If you can call it a finale. With no scares to speak of, and even the jack-in-the-box fright effects telegraphed minutes ahead, The Ring Two never feels like it is building up to anything, so the conclusion moves so slowly that it contains not a hint of suspense. The original movie had the obvious ticking clock of the Samara’s rigid killing time table, but the sequel has no such urgency or even clarity about what Rachel has to stop from happening.

The first film had gorgeous gray photography of Seattle and Puget Sound, locations not often seen in movies, and at least the sequel returns to the beautiful overcast Pacific Northwest, this time historic Astoria, the oldest city on the west coast. But the gloom with which Gore Vebrinski infused Seattle in The Ring doesn’t follow the new film to Astoria. Nor will any more Ring films follow this one. Hideo Nakata has killed off his own franchise. It’s as dead as VHS.

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