The Ring Two (2005)

Movie Info

Plumbing in this town is crazy!!!

In order to save her child Aidan (David Dorfman), Rachel (Naomi Watts) unwittingly unleashed an evil on the world in the form of Samara.  Though Rachel thought she left that aspect of her life behind when she moved from Seattle to Astoria, the death of teens reveals that Samara’s curse has followed them.  Now, Samara has taken control of Aidan and trying to make his life her own…leaving Rachel the suspect of child abuse by her coworker Max Rourke (Simon Baker).  Rachel must find a way to separate Aidan from Samara before it is too late, or Aidan could be lost forever.

Directed Hideo Nakata who directed the original Ringu, The Ring Two is the follow-up to the immense break-out hit The Ring of 2002.  The movie was released to negative reviews but fared well at the box office and overseas.

Hey Bambi…how’s it going?

I loved The Ring.  In a world where jaded horror movie watchers rarely get jumps anymore, The Ring provided some old-school scares and an intense building fear.  I had hoped that The Ring Two would build on these fears, but the movie instead ends up only being a waste of two hours.

The story of The Ring just loses the punch of the first film.  The first film does a great job building the terror with the idea of a ticking timebomb of seven days till death.  Everyone in the first film is slowly dying and that idea is terrifying.  Here, there isn’t much of a sense of urgency and the only thrills you get are baths and killer deer.  It is almost laughable at points and has that frustrating “so what” when they survive because they’re never going to be able to explain all the dead bodies that surround them.

Guess what…I’m back!

I do feel sorry for the cast of this film.  All parties involved have been in better films and deserve better from a script.  The smart relationship between Naomi Watts and David Dorfman is dumbed down for this movie, and Simon Rex’s role is relatively pointless.  The original Samara Daveigh Chase is replaced by Kelly Stables, but Chase is seen in flashbacks.

The visuals from the movie are also a step back.  The deer look horrible and though I do rather like the ending of the film with Rachel going into the video, it doesn’t make much sense plot-wise.  It just feels like it is randomly tossed in for a good visual.

The Ring Two is a rather disappointing film.  It doesn’t stand on its own and as a sequel it ruins the first film a little.  The Ring was unfortunately not sealed with this film.  A soft reboot, relaunch of the series was released in 2017 called Rings…which managed to be worse than this entry

Related Links:

The Ring (2002)

Rings (2017)

Ringu (1998)

Ringu 2 (1999)