The Ring Two

Movie Name: The Ring Two
Year of Release: 2005
Director: Hideo Nakata
Starring: Naomi Watts, David Dorfman, Simon Baker, Sissy Spacek, Elizabeth Perkins, Gary Cole, Ryan Merriman, Emily VanCamp, James Lesure, Daveigh Chase, Kelly Stables, Kelly Overton, Michael Chieffo
Genre: Horror, Mystery
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 5
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Synopsis and Review:

After the immense and unexpected success of the first installment of "The Ring", Dreamworks quickly put a sequel in motion, recruiting for the director chair Hideo Nakata, the director of the original "Ring" and its sequel "Ring 2". The film, which takes place 6 months after the events of the original film, follows the events surrounding the life of Rachel Keller and Aidan her son, now living in Oregon. In the previous chapter of the series, Rachel after made a copy of the original tape, in order to save Aidan, and let it loose for someone else to see and distribute it. The killer videotape finds its way to their town of Astoria, and upon investigating the death of one of the teenagers victimized by it, Rachel is horrified to realize Samara has actually been focusing on finding her. She destroys what she thinks to be one of the remaining tapes, but Samara finds a way to inhabit Aidan's body, and slowly starts taking over his behaviors. Rachel realizes what is taking place, but is unable to protect Aidan, once he has to be taken to the hospital, and the doctors suspect of abuse. She sets on a journey of discovering Samara's birth parents, in order to hopefully finding out a way of saving Aidan and vanquishing Samara. 

This sequel from Hideo Nakata sadly suffers from having a script that is non-sensical and poorly developed. What made the original film so compelling, wasn't solely the fact that Samara was an entity seemingly unstoppable, but also the fact that the narrative centered around Rachel and Aidan, a woman who was not exactly the typical mother, and the young precocious boy with the ability to sense things out of the ordinary (modeled a bit after Haley Joel Osment's Cole character from "The Sixth Sense"). This sequel and its contrived script, fails to build much upon the relationship between these two characters, the same going for whatever intent Samara has for pursuing Rachel. Aside from the sheer lack of logic for what happens to and between the main characters and some of the events that are taking place, Hideo Nakata does manage to build tension throughout the narrative, and an atmosphere peppered with unease and potential menace. Though the film does feature some cleverly crafted sequences, the lack of character development for the leads and supporting characters, fails to bring much resonance to what is happening. The cast is what eventually makes this film watchable, with Naomi Watts making the most from her character, with good support from David Dorfman, Sissy Spacek, Simon Baker and Elizabeth Perkins. The production team is solid, including the cinematography from Gabriel Beristain and the score from Henning Lohner and Martin Tillman, who leverage the theme from Hans Zimmer who scored the previous installment. While not a terrible film, it's simply not a very memorable one.