DVD: The Ring Two
Here's the thing about sequels to movies like The Ring: they frequently suffer from what I call "The Jaws Syndrome". Remember the first Jaws movie? You know, where they didn't show the shark 400 times, and you were scared of the unknown? How big is the shark? Why's the shark killing all these people? You know, stuff like that. Then in the sequels, they make the shark itself the focal point of the movie and we see it all the time. We see all the mayhem the shark causes close-up, rather than in shadows and through bubbles in the water. It takes away all the mystery. The Ring Two suffers a little from The Jaws Syndrome, but not enough to make it a bad movie for that reason only.
It's six months after the events of The Ring, and Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) has moved away from Seattle with her creepy son Aidan (David Dorfman). She's still in jounalism of course, but this time she's inexplicably an editor rather than a reporter in a small town paper. I'm sure they must have been thrilled to get a big-time reporter from the city and all, so...oh, wait a minute. This is never addressed. Anyway, I digress. I won't give away too much of the plot, because there's really no need to. Creepy things start happening, Aidan starts acting weird, and we need to find out more about the other creepy kid--the dead one--Samara.
Now let me just say this: I am a big fan of the first movie. It scared me to death in the theater, though I'm finding out that most people who saw it outside the theater didn't get so scared. It had to be the fact that I saw it there that made it so scary, because it's honestly the only movie that's frightened me like that in my adult life. And I don't mean it made me jump. I mean I was thinking about it and still getting creeped out after I got home. The main problem the sequel has is that it doesn't use the elements that worked for the first movie to their full potential. The Ring didn't feel like a horror movie. It felt like a drama that had people pursuing terrifying secrets and stories. Along the way, we got the pants scared off of us. The Ring Two, on the other hand, sometimes resorts to using the goofy horror movie tricks that we've seen a million times. The camera sneaks up on someone who has their back turned, the music builds and, *gasp!* Oh. It was just Frank! Sneaky old Frank, why'd you sneak up on me like that? The Jaws Syndrome shows its ugly face when we actually start to kind of see how the people die when Samara kills them, and we get more extended shots of their deformed faces. I tell you, a quick shot of the face is much, much scarier. With this, we know what's coming. So we see the face for a few more seconds and we say, "You know, that's not as bad as I remember it".
Admittedly we only see that kind of thing for the first half of the movie, but the point is that we didn't need it at all. If director Hideo Nakata (who directed the Japanese original, Ringu) had spent more time in the beginning trying to build the story and less time trying to make us jump, the movie might have been more satisfying than it ended up being. Of course the screenplay didn't do him many favors, giving us a few new things but mostly a story we'd already seen. I got the feeling sometimes that the characters themselves have forgotten the events that happened just six months ago. Maybe they've repressed their memories, right?
All in all, if you enjoyed the first Ring, you probably won't hate the sequel. If you hated the original, you're probably not reading this review. When the story actually starts moving along there are some genuinely creepy moments, and Sissy Spacek provides her own brand of eeriness. Frights aside however, the movie leaves us with questions that we shouldn't still have after a conclusion that (we assume) was supposed to provide all the answers. Confusing? Exactly.
Final Score: 2.5 cents.
P.S.: I should also mention that the DVD is "The Unrated Version". In fact, when you start the movie it says that again: "This Version is Unrated" as if to say "You may have heard that the theater version sucked, but this is way better!" All it means is that they put in some of the deleted scenes that they usually save for special features, then they didn't re-submit it to the MPAA.So if you saw the version in the theater and didn't like it, you probably won't like this one any better. In fact, if you only saw it once, you probably won't even be able to tell the difference.
It's six months after the events of The Ring, and Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) has moved away from Seattle with her creepy son Aidan (David Dorfman). She's still in jounalism of course, but this time she's inexplicably an editor rather than a reporter in a small town paper. I'm sure they must have been thrilled to get a big-time reporter from the city and all, so...oh, wait a minute. This is never addressed. Anyway, I digress. I won't give away too much of the plot, because there's really no need to. Creepy things start happening, Aidan starts acting weird, and we need to find out more about the other creepy kid--the dead one--Samara.
Now let me just say this: I am a big fan of the first movie. It scared me to death in the theater, though I'm finding out that most people who saw it outside the theater didn't get so scared. It had to be the fact that I saw it there that made it so scary, because it's honestly the only movie that's frightened me like that in my adult life. And I don't mean it made me jump. I mean I was thinking about it and still getting creeped out after I got home. The main problem the sequel has is that it doesn't use the elements that worked for the first movie to their full potential. The Ring didn't feel like a horror movie. It felt like a drama that had people pursuing terrifying secrets and stories. Along the way, we got the pants scared off of us. The Ring Two, on the other hand, sometimes resorts to using the goofy horror movie tricks that we've seen a million times. The camera sneaks up on someone who has their back turned, the music builds and, *gasp!* Oh. It was just Frank! Sneaky old Frank, why'd you sneak up on me like that? The Jaws Syndrome shows its ugly face when we actually start to kind of see how the people die when Samara kills them, and we get more extended shots of their deformed faces. I tell you, a quick shot of the face is much, much scarier. With this, we know what's coming. So we see the face for a few more seconds and we say, "You know, that's not as bad as I remember it".
Admittedly we only see that kind of thing for the first half of the movie, but the point is that we didn't need it at all. If director Hideo Nakata (who directed the Japanese original, Ringu) had spent more time in the beginning trying to build the story and less time trying to make us jump, the movie might have been more satisfying than it ended up being. Of course the screenplay didn't do him many favors, giving us a few new things but mostly a story we'd already seen. I got the feeling sometimes that the characters themselves have forgotten the events that happened just six months ago. Maybe they've repressed their memories, right?
All in all, if you enjoyed the first Ring, you probably won't hate the sequel. If you hated the original, you're probably not reading this review. When the story actually starts moving along there are some genuinely creepy moments, and Sissy Spacek provides her own brand of eeriness. Frights aside however, the movie leaves us with questions that we shouldn't still have after a conclusion that (we assume) was supposed to provide all the answers. Confusing? Exactly.
Final Score: 2.5 cents.
P.S.: I should also mention that the DVD is "The Unrated Version". In fact, when you start the movie it says that again: "This Version is Unrated" as if to say "You may have heard that the theater version sucked, but this is way better!" All it means is that they put in some of the deleted scenes that they usually save for special features, then they didn't re-submit it to the MPAA.So if you saw the version in the theater and didn't like it, you probably won't like this one any better. In fact, if you only saw it once, you probably won't even be able to tell the difference.
Tha Docta's two cents. | 12:17 AM
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