Susan Granger’s review of “The Ring Two” (DreamWorks)
Remember that cursed videotape, followed by a warning phone call, that doomed anyone who watched it to a terrible death in exactly seven days? It’s ba-a-a-ck! This sequel has taken a rather circuitous route to the big-screen. Based on a series of novels by Japanese horror writer Koji Suzuki, “Ringu” was released in Japan in 1998. It quickly became the highest grossing film in Japanese cinema history and spawned two sequels. Gore Verbinski directed the American version, but when he couldn’t do this sequel, he suggested the original “Ringu” director Hideo Nakata. Great choice! Familiar with the mythology, Nakata brings a sensibility that achieves horror through story and character, not grisly gore and special effects. So it’s six months later. Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts), a newspaper reporter, and her young son Aiden (David Dorfman) have left Seattle and relocated to Astoria, Oregon, where she finds yet another copy of that bizarre, deadly videotape which she promptly burns. Somehow, this releases Samara (Davleigh Chase), the malevolent, dark-haired girl whose step-parents threw her down a well to die. She promptly takes possession of young Aiden, along with – one assumes – a surreal herd of rampaging deer who attack Rachel’s car on a country road. And we learn a lot more about vengeful Samara after meeting her deranged biological mother (Sissy Spacek). As reflected by his anticipatory and suspenseful pacing of Ehren Kruger’s maternal-angst script, Nakata is a superb storyteller, eliciting remarkably solid, quite creepy performances, particularly from David Dorfman. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “The Rings Two” is a scary 7. If you liked being tormented by the first, don’t miss the second.
