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Film review

Caught by tape

Characters in The Ring Two try to escape a fatal tape that's trailing them, but this time around the horror elicits more chuckles than chills.

By PHILIP BOOTH
Published March 17, 2005

	[Photo: DreamWorks Pictures]
	Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts, left) discovers to her horror that the evil spirit Samara has a terrible hold on her son Aidan (David Dorfman) in The Ring Two.

So much for the good intentions of Hideo Nakata, director of The Ring Two, the sequel to Gore Verbinski's hit 2002 horror chiller about a demonic videotape and a nearly inescapable curse.

Even for those who didn't catch the merciless parody of The Ring in Scary Movie 3 (with its view-from-beneath-the-toilet-seat shot), The Ring Two is funny, as confirmed by a crowd of horror lovers who couldn't help giggling during a recent screening of the movie. It isn't scary in the least.

And the film's humor is unintentional, which makes Nakata's movie even more comical.

A prime example (minor spoiler ahead) takes place as reporter and single mom Rachel (Naomi Watts) and her supernaturally sensitive son Aidan (David Dorfman) travel a forest road. They're somewhere in the woods of the Pacific Northwest, when, what to their wondering eyes should appear but a single rampaging deer. And then another, and another, and yet another, and finally more than enough energetic, big-antlered beasts to take Santa's sleigh around the world, twice.

"Don't stop," Aidan advises, sensibly enough. Rachel plows ahead, and pays the consequences - a banged-up compact car, a shaken-up child and a suspicious co-worker (Simon Baker).

The two have relocated to a picturesque coastal town in Oregon - cue verdant foliage, wet environs, and mountains-and-sea views - in an effort to escape the curse that chased them out of Seattle. There, Rachel had stumbled onto a videotape packed with strange images, including that of a woman leaping to her death from a cliff overlooking the rocky ocean floor far below. Anyone who watched the tape was doomed to die, unless he or she could make a copy and force someone else to watch the tape.

That tape, like a holiday fruitcake, is back in circulation in Rachel's neighborhood. And Samara (Kelly Stables), the ghost behind all the mayhem, an evil spirit bent on revenge for the sins of its mother, is angry because Rachel has attempted to destroy the tape.

Nakata, in the service of an increasingly nonsensical plot, offers several set pieces that are dazzling, along with a hodgepodge of other elements.

Among the former are a room filled with water, magically transported from a bathtub to the ceiling, and another room plastered with spiraling tree-shaped designs. Among the latter are an appearance by a nearly unrecognizable Sissy Spacek as a crone with a dark secret and a suggestion that Rachel should "listen to the voices"; images that owe debts to The Shining; and a cameolike appearance by Gary Cole, as a real estate agent named Martin. While showing a house whose former occupants both committed suicide, he explains that "they bought a condo in Phoenix."

Two revises some of the concepts of the first film. Samara, not content to do her dirty deeds within the context of VHS, decides to mess with the health and welfare of Aidan, initially giving the kid a bad case of hypothermia.

Later, Samara decides she needs more out of the deal. "She wants to be him," as someone explains about the ghost's intentions for Aidan. Thus, Nakata rather jarringly shifts the movie in the direction of The Exorcist or The Omen, as the boy grows increasingly detached, and facilitates Samara's evil plans, including a pair of casual homicides. The tape, anyone?

Director: Hideo Nakata

Cast: Naomi Watts, Simon Baker, David Dorfman, Elizabeth Perkins, Gary Cole, Sissy Spacek, Ryan Merriman, Emily VanCamp, Kelly Stables

Screenplay: Ehren Kruger

Rating: PG-13; violence; gore; frightening images

Running time: 109 min.

[Last modified March 16, 2005, 12:33:08]