Ring 2 (1999)

Sex :
Violence :
Director Hideo Nakata
Writers Hideo Nakata
Starring Miki Nakatani, Hitomi Sato, Kyôko Fukada, Fumiyo Kohinata, Kenjiro Ishimaru
Genre Revenant
Tagline None Listed
Country

Review

"Why were you the only one saved?" - Sadako, what the ......

Man does Nakata ever shoe horn a lot in this chiller. Reiko and Yoichi are in hiding after the ordeals suffered through in the first movie. Two reasons here; Reiko's Dad is dead, guess what happened there it ain't stated, and Yoichi is displaying some disturbing ESP tendencies. Also returning from the first movie, and here taking central stage, are Mai Takano who was Reiko's ex husband's student, and Okazaki the dude from the newspaper where Reiko used to work. Mai and Okazaki following some clues, and supernatural occurrences, to track down Reiko and Yoichi and to follow up on the expanding curse.

Meanwhile Masami Kurahashi, one of the two girls at the beginning of Ring has been institutionalised and shows a marked aversion to Television. The police have Sadako's body and have found her father Takashi. Forensics are trying to recreate Sadako's face, no apparent reason given. And to cap it all off some Scientist dudes are trying to stop Sadako's rage by ... uhmmm ... submerging it in water or something equally weird. Hey is that enough for ya! We even get some good well happenings to spook things up over here. Much chills ensue, and quite a bit of wtf is going on here at stages. Let's go play with Sadako....

Hideo Hakata simply destroyed the Japanese Box Office with his original movie Ring. A previously unheralded demographic marched on mass to the local multiplexs and the horror genre exploded out of it's dark caverns to dominate in Japan over the course of a couple of years.

Generally when we considered females and horror movies, there's likely to be in total three possible roles for the ladies. The exploitation one, hey plenty of boobs shown in horrorland and l ain't complaining. The gruesome death one, which usually involves plenty of boobs. Or the scream queen one, you know the chick that stands there screaming and showing off her boobs, prior to some dude coming to the rescue. Think we might have hit on a "recurrent theme" here, to paraphrase the rampaging Liz over at "Call Yourself a Scientist".

A few too many things are signposted but otherwise solid revenant outing

Hakata said to hell with that and presented strong female characters who are pretty much prepared to take matters into their own hands. His first major lead, Reiko, is certainly no wilting flower. Japanese Chicks lapped this up and marched on mass to the cinema, making Ring one of the biggest movies to date from Japan. Boredwood of course didn't miss the opportunities, The Ring and The Grudge powered horror back into vogue in the U.S. Naturally Boredwood being Boredwood this hasn't stopped the never ending boob powered horror flicks from being made either. If in doubt, lashings of boobs will get you an audience, an actual movie with good actors is only a secondary consideration really. Might be digressing here.

Naturally with money flowing like saki at a geisha bar, Hakata ripped out this sequel in 1999 to again amaze and delight true horror fans everywhere.

What Hakata does in Ring 2 is surprisingly to be more George Romero than Romero is. There's a washed out allure to the movie, and it's almost filmed documentary style. Once again Hakata narrows down use of colour, and keeps the soundtrack in check. The dude is out to scare the panties off us, not present a comic book feel to proceedings. I was hip with that, and was digging into the spareness of the movie with both hands. The movie's over all spooky feeling is achieved via Hakata's use of slow camera movements, almost at a crawl in places, strange viewing angles, and handling of he various supernatural scenes. When Hakata goes scare scene on us, he nails that and aims right between your eyes. That well scene toward the end is certainly a highlight, and is framed brilliantly with Sadako giving her one line of dialogue to date. Certainly had me jumping like a cat on speed.

Where Ring 2 is a slight let down from Ring is in the script and multiple plot developments. Whereas the original retained mystery throughout, the sequel hangs, draws, and quarters everything to the nth degree. Come on Hakata we're dialing in to work it out for ourselves, not to have one or more characters explain Sadako's history, the whole curse thing, and how we're going to resolve it. We kind of get the curse is due to Sadako's rage without needing big neon signposts to alert us to the facts of life here.

At stages the movie seemed destined to self implode as plot angles came in left, right, and friggin center. The audience is left trying to remember who the various characters actually are, and what direction the movie is going in. It got pretty freakingly complicated for this wild colonial boy. Yoichi is either possessed by Sadako or has somehow inheriated her rage Ju On style, depending on which scene your watching either interpretation can be made. How they resolve that is pretty left field to be honest and had me thinking wtf. Equally the chick down the looney bin gets introduced, doesn't like TVs, affects them somehow, and then disappears from the movie. Whatcha doing there Nakata, that was slightly heavy handed and not all together successful at the end of the day. I keep waiting on Masami Kurahashi to make another appearance, doesn't happen.

The whole movie is nearly coming off the rails with the scientific attempt to resolve the curse. There's simply too many characters on screen, and too much happening to give full impact. Did dig the scare scene this lead to though, how freaky deaky was that one. Nakata really knows how to ramp the scare tactics when he gets fully into horror mode.

End of day Nakata holds it all together, but l have a sneaking suspicion some of the plot angles could have been dropped in order to deliver up a better banquet of the macabre.

Miki Natakami (Mai) stormed the movie and emoted all over the place. A strong female lead role that matches Matsushima Nanako's Reiko from the original movie. Speaking of Nanako, she's back in limited screen time as Reiko. Nanako does what she can with a poorly written character, and l would have liked to have dug into more of her this time round as well. Rkiya Otaka (Yoichi) is certainly in line for the creepiest kid to have ever shown up on our movie screens award. Otaka plays it just right, and l certainly wont be up for baby sitting duties if the need arises. Yuurei Yanagi (Okazaki) was doing what he could with a sparsely written character, some more time was needed with this character as Yanagi doesn't have enough to flesh out in this movie.

T&A was me sitting watching this in my jockey juniors, does that count?

Special mention of Rie Inou (Sadako), she's back as the chilling antagonist of the piece, and she's even more pissed off this time. Inou grabs the nail gun, aims at the barn door, and blows it off it's hinges. Stunning performance once again.

As stated Nakata has the soundtrack roped and tied. The movie is perhaps lacking in this regard, but when Kenji Kawai was allowed to come on through it certainly did the job. Nice work from the composer, and the score adds to the whole visual treat we get.

Ring 2 does not match the share power and vision of the original movie, but remains an engrossing enough movie experience to make viewing worth while. There's a tad too much in the explanations going down for my liking, I preferred the original movie's ability to present the clues to the audience, and leave them to work it out for themselves. Equally there's slightly too many plot angles coming at us, and Director/Writer Hakata should have saved some of the movie's side bars for a later sequel. Missing also this time up was the natural time frame of the first movie. We don't have seven days this time to get things resolved, and this means Nakata can tangent like a Maths teacher on steroids.

Are we ringed out yet? Thus far we have touched bases with The Ring, The Ring 2, Ring, and now Ring 2. Well apparently not, as we still have the goodness of Ring 0: Birthday to come. Maybe we'll even get to Rasen/Spiral and Ring Virus in due course. And by heck mark us down for The Ring 3 when Boredwood gets around to making it.

I would recommend Ring 2 with the proviso that you should watch Ring prior to slipping the DVD on. Heck make a night of it and catch both movies alone in the dark. Just what the doctor ordered after the recent spate of sub standard PG13 horror lite fare on our menus. Director Hakata knows how to creep you out, and he's not holding back in this outing.

ScaryMinds Rates this movie as ...

  Sadako, the revenant who just keeps on giving.