Ring Two a Broken Circle

I’m not one to normally rag on movie audiences. We all know the deal; crying babies annoy, cell phones suck, talking couples drive you up a wall; so why beat a dead horse anymore than you have to, right? Well excuse me for ranting for just one moment, then, because I just had the single worst theater-going experience of my entire life this past Tuesday. It was the rudest crowd imaginable I’ve ever seen at a promotional screening, every bad habit you’ve ever loathed and hated on display (save the screaming baby thank goodness) and it positively, absolutely ruined any chance whatsoever I had to enjoy the movie.

I tell you all of this because before reading my review of The Ring Two I ask you keep the above statement clearly in mind. I was furious while watching this movie, perturbed and annoyed to such a great extent I probably could have watched Casablanca and come away disappointed.

Be all that as it may, The Ring Two still is not a very good sequel. Picking up six months after the events in the first, it is a muddled exercise in improbable pabulum poorly scripted and conceived by screenwriter Ehren Kruger (Scream 3). Even the addition of director Hideo Nakata, the creator of the original Japanese Ringu epics on which the American series is based, doesn’t help, the filmmaker unable to recapture the terrifyingly creepy vibe his films had. While the movie does have its moments there simply aren’t enough of them, and the only thing making The Ring Two even remotely worthwhile is the tightly wound performance of star Naomi Watts.

Watts returns as ex-Seattleite Rachel Keller. She’s left the big city for the relative obscurity of country life in the seemingly idyllic confines of the beautiful Astoria, OR, feeling a change in scenery would be best both for herself and son Aidan (David Dorfman) after the horrific events that rocked their lives. Taking a job at the local paper under owner and editor-in-chief Max Rourke (Simon Baker) all is going wonderfully, wonderfully, that is, until a mysterious tape shows up in town along with the gruesomely disfigured corpse of a local high school student. Rachel thought it was over; thought by making a copy Samara (Kelly Stables) would leave them alone. She was wrong, and now Samara has found her and Aidan, and it’s time for the evil ghost-child to return once again to the world of flesh and blood.

Yawn. Coming from someone who thought the original Ring was one of the best Hollywood remakes to come across the pond in ages, this sequel isn’t even remotely worth the time or the effort of sitting through it. It’s a mish-mash of elements taken from the first film, the Japanese sequel, The Exorcist, The Omen, even David Cronenberg’s Videodrome; it’s both too much and too little all at the same time, Kruger apparently not caring in the slightest if his script makes even a lick of sense. People plop in and out of dreams, reality and even the gosh darn television set for no other reason than it’s convenient at the time it happens. But it’s all so silly it isn’t even remotely scary or suspenseful, not exactly traits one goes for when trying to put together a successful horror film. Worse, everyone other than Rachel is a one-dimensional caricature, stock B-grade horror movie characters trapped in a feature that hasn’t a clue what to do with them.

The much talked about appearance of Sissy Spacek, her first horror outing since getting an Oscar nomination for Carrie 29-year ago, is also waste. She shows up here all a twitter skittering too and fro like an ant scurrying for food. Better, with her hair all black, stringy and loaded up with grease, Spacek’s a dead ringer for a particularly disheveled (which, if you’ve seen him lately, is really saying something) Michael Jackson and I’m guessing it’s not exactly the look either she or the filmmaker’s were going for.

Poor Nakata, it’s a shame the masterfully talented macabre master ended up having to endure a script this pitiful to make his American debut. Still, he still manages a few scenes of startling wit and icy ingenuity, not the least of which is a race up the side of a well with Samara in full bug-eyed fury. There are some other decent moments, but I can’t really say they did all that much to make my pulse quicken or excite me to heart palpitations. And while it all looks and sounds amazing (Gabriel Beristain’s chilly cinematography and Hans Zimmer’s eerie score are both standouts) none of that really matters much if as a viewer all I’m doing is sitting there biding my time waiting for the end credits.

Still, I’m going to give The Ring Two a pass. Not because I think it deserves it, I’m pretty sure it doesn’t, but because the experience of watching it with such an amazingly uncouth audience such as the one I did was so enormously unctuous I’m sure much of that animosity rubbed off onto the feature itself. I guess I’ll finish saying this: A movie theater is a not a living room, don’t treat it or the rest of the audience as it one for the ten dollars you’re wasting isn’t just your own but also that of every other person sitting there with you. And on that note, I’m done with both the issue and The Ring Two. Good riddance.

Film Rating: êê  (out of 4)