Review

Rachel and her son Aidan have moved to Astoria to escape memories of the revenge seeking Samara Morgan. Rachel has a new job as a journalist with the local newspaper The Daily Astorian, and things are looking promising with Aidan showing some real talent with photography. Naturally the good times don't keep rolling as a death is reported over police radio, which involves some facial disfigurement.

We soon learn the infamous tape Rachel destroyed isn't the only copy of Samara's greatest hits and the little minx has been searching for Rachel with a little mommy time on her mind. With Aidan showing some distinct personality changes it's time for Rachel and her boss Max to spring into action. Unfortunately Max ain't staying the distance, the deer aren't happy, and things are starting to look soggy. Can Rachel learn how to send Samara back to television land or will Aidan become a shemale!

J-Horror honcho and Ring alumni Hideo Nakata here attempts to get something working in the Boredwood mode and while not falling flat on his arse still runs into some stormy weather trying to wrap Japanese horror traits around a Western plot. While Nakata is all over the revenant issues, and you have to see his use of water as a motif to fully appreciate what the dude has going down, he runs into a stone wall with the possession elements of the plot. In simple terms Nakata has the first block of The Ring Two rocking, but then loses his way in the second block, before stalling with a final resolution that had me wondering if he hadn't discovered the Studio's whiskey supply.

Nakata opens with all these overhead images of water that are quite effective and eerie, you get the feeling of something approaching a small city that he next focuses on. Excellent achievement and I had the chill factor going down big time, 2am viewing over here. We then discover this dude, Jake, trying to get his date to watch something real scary in the lounge room while he hangs out in the kitchen. No prizes for guessing just what scary movie he wants her to catch. With the minutes ticking down to his seven day prize, Emily, his date, finally puts the movie on. Lucky last minute escape, except what's with all this water creeping in under the kitchen door from the lounge room. Seems Emily put the movie on but didn't watch it, and hey the kids now have a water logged baby sitter to ensure clothes are kept on. Nakata nails all this and I was certainly hunkering down to a tale of Samara influenced goodness.

Things are kept on the correct path with a gradually escalation in hostilities between Samara and Rachel over whether or not Aidan should take a walk on the wild side, as Lou Reed would say. Things start to come unstuck however when we visit a local Farmer's market for no apparent reason. Aidan has an encounter with Samara, Aidan and Rachel have an encounter with way past dodgy CGI deer, and the Audience have an encounter with being taken out of the movie. Having set-up quite the spooky atmosphere Nakata completely loses his handle on the movie. The pacing goes out the window, a couple of characters die for the sake of having a body count, and the mounting groan inducing symbolism wallops you round the head. Yes we got the deer antler thing in the Morgan basement of infinite background information, we got the water logged features, could we at least have got a coherent movie that didn't move in ever slower circles! While the Writer, Ehren Kruger, is at pains to add deep meaning to random dialogue and props I was at pains to stop hitting the eject button.

I don't even want to talk about the trite ending to this flick, was Ehren Kruger out of ideas, did Nakata have a pressing engagement elsewhere he needed to get to, is Naomi Watts really regretting her involvement in this diabolically bad sequel? Your guess is as good as mine, but at least we go full circle with the water metaphor, which I would imagine is a good thing.

As a Director Nakata is showing signs of being influenced by Dario Argento, lots of crane cam panning downwards for starters. What Nakata gets right is his J-Horror sensibilities, plenty of style and meaning being applied to what is a pretty vapid Hollywood script in all honesty. Nakata is constricted in the movie by a Studio system that hasn't yet learnt it can't do horror by committee, Ring Two would have been so much better if Nakata was let off the leash to do his thing, which is after all why he was hired in the first place. The Japanese Director must have been confused to all hell over some of the plot points that make zero sense, did were really need to know about Samara's birth mother? You get the feeling that if Nakata had of been involved with his own script writers we might have got an infinitely better movie than the at times confused mess we end up with.

Nakata does nail some scenes, as we would expect, which goes to show what he could have done with a competent script in his hands. The already mentioned scenes rock, a bathroom with water cascading upwards is more than memorable, and Nakata rings every ouch of tension and atmosphere out of a body in a bag scene that hits a couple of high notes.

One question confused my crew while watching, when Rachel burns the tape does this release the spirit of Samara in Karen Black Trilogy of Terror style? We couldn't decide on this one, as directly after the almost Evil Dead tape hissing madness a certain well known movie starts playing back at Rachel's crib for Aidan's benefit.

The two Aussie leads, Naomi Watts and Simon Baker, are trying their best, but really haven't all that much to work with in a movie about possession that doesn't actually used that effectively to scare the pants off the Audience. David Dorfman (Aidan) is also pretty otherworldly and doing the business, while the make-up effects for the Samara twins, Daveigh Chase and Kelly Stables, was getting two thumbs up.

Overall I went from almost hypothermia on the chill factor to luke warm as the movie progressed. Nakata when left to his own devices was hitting one out of the ground, but the old Studio system was there to ensure we wouldn't get a good movie as they pulled on the handbrake. Disappointing second movie in the series, you have to say The Ring 3 isn't going to happen unless an Indie outfit grabs the reins and runs with it.