The Ring Two Review
by Rick Ferguson (filmgeek65 AT hotmail DOT com)April 26th, 2005
In January 2003 I picked up a DVD copy (Region 1, thankfully) of the original 1998 Japanese film RINGU at Kim's Video on St. Mark's Place in Manhattan. When I found it, I felt like a kid who had just discovered a secret stash of fireworks or skin mags- I couldn't wait to get home to brag about it to my geek friends. This was a few months after the Gore Verbinski-directed American remake had hit the theaters, and I couldn't wait to take the Greyhound back home to my double-wide out here in Bush country to pop it into my player. I was convinced that the Japanese version would hold horrors and wonders barely hinted at in the chrome-plated, buffed and lacquered American version. Weren't originals by definition better than the inevitably inferior remakes?
Here's the thing: I liked Verbinski's version better. Had I seen the original film first- ideally in a packed Tokyo theater full of screaming Japanese teenagers- I might have felt differently. But Verbinski's THE RING, while possessed of a plot with all the consistency of warm Neufchatel, really cooked. In spots it achieved near masterful levels of tension, and that damned video actually was creepy.
Verbinski's remake hewed fairly closely to the original's template. Hideo Nakata's RINGU, however, was both duller and more peculiar than its sibling. Screenwriter Ehren Kruger wisely chose to punt such hokum as the spunky reporter's telepathic abilities in favor of more pages devoted to the soggy ghost Samara, who had the potential to join Freddy and Jason in the pantheon of great horror movie villains.
THE RING 2, I'm sorry to report, comes nowhere close to the thrills and chills of the 2002 remake. Watching a double bill of THE RINGS 1 and 2 is the cinematic equivalent of driving eastward through the Rocky Mountains and into Kansas. You spend the first half of the trip dazzled by the miraculous scenery, knocked out by the breathtaking peaks and the spectacular valleys- and then spend the second half of the trip slapping yourself to stay awake through the hundreds of miles of flat-lined prairie, with nothing to occupy your interest but the occasional grain silo, combine or cow. If you're lucky, you might get to pull off at an exit to snap a picture of the world's second-largest ball of twine.
So much for the extended metaphors. In THE RING 2, Naomi Watts returns as spunky reporter Rachel Keller, who has fled Samara and the horrors of post-grunge Seattle for the friendlier confines of Astoria, Oregon, where she hooks up with the local rag and presumably starts filing political exposes to appear next to the high school basketball scores. Also returning is her gloomy son Aidan (David Dorfman), who sees dead people, and who now looks like Charles Grodin's Mini-Me. Like the first film, THE RING 2 opens with a prologue involving another couple of teenagers encountering that fateful and anachronistic videotape- I don't even know anyone who still owns a video cassette player, but everyone in these movies owns at least two.
Rachel gets wind of the eerily familiar story and leaves behind her befuddled editor Max (Simon Baker) to investigate. Soon enough, she detects the mildewed stench of Samara, the undead video-bound little girl who extracts soul-sucking revenge on all who don't pass on her tragic back-story by making another poor victim watch the dreaded videotape. But Samara may have found a new way to enter our world- and her fate may now be bound up inextricably with the fate of Rachel's son.
Here's the thing: it was a mistake to bring back Naomi Watts for the sequel, her contractual obligation notwithstanding. Watts is a fine actress, you understand. She acquits herself admirably, and I'm sure everyone involved was happy to have her around. But by centering the sequel on Rachel and Aidan, you immediately lose the core idea that made THE RING such an effective horror film- the videotape as an evil virus, replicating and spreading from victim to victim, only sparing those who willingly infect others. That's a kick-ass, subtext-laden concept that could easily sustain enough sequels to get us through the rest of the decade.
But Ehren Kruger, returning for his screenwriting encore, abandons this concept utterly. He's refashioned the Rachel-Aidan-Samara triangle as a garden-variety possession tale, and more's the pity. Without the killer hook, we're left with only the least successful aspects of the original- the nonsensical plot, the fractured internal logic, the male sidekick with the target on his back, and the so-called terrible revelations that don't amount to a hill of beans. The script does introduce a compelling child-abuse subplot with loads of potential, but then doesn't have the stones to see it through.
And let's face it- though it was a noble idea to bring on RINGU director Nakata to helm the sequel, he's no Gore Verbinski. Verbinski turned the potential train wreck of PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN into a hit film, plays guitar in a punk band and created the Budweiser frogs, for crying out loud. There's precious little tension in Nakata's film. A nonsensical attack by a herd of angry deer stands out as the big set piece, and the climax manages a few modest thrills. But mostly it's just a drag. The movie is rife with intriguing cameos by such heavy hitters as Sissy Spacek, Gary "Lumbergh" Cole and Elizabeth Perkins, but they're merely shuffled on set, told to hit their marks and say their lines, and then quickly shuffled off again. In the theater, the original left you exhilarated; the sequel leaves you yawning into your empty popcorn bag.
Here's some free advice, Mr. Kruger, if you're reading. Assuming that THE RING 2 does enough business in box office and DVD rentals to spawn a third movie, return the series to its roots with a new cast and build the plot around the accursed videotape and Samara's hellish need for attention. And for the love of God, enough with the PG-13 horror movies already. What we need is the return of the good old-fashioned R-rated horror film. Let's see some blood. Let's see some tits. Let's see some really scary shit. The teenagers will still turn out; they always do. There are plenty of foreign and cult splatter films stacked on the shelves of Kim's Video, all crying out for splashy remakes. You have only to spend a few hours browsing the racks there to find suitable inspiration.
***
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