Movie Reviews
One of the reasons “The Ring” was so scary was that it was absolutely never, ever sunny. Or even remotely sunny. Never once did a ray of sunshine pierce the camera lens and create some light. Director Gore Verbinski made it quite clear that the story he was telling was most definitely not a happy one, and so to have the forum of colors resonating around yellow or orange would be to defeat the whole purpose of the film.
One of the reasons “The Ring Two” is so unscary is that it is sunny. That’s it. That small, seemingly insignificant detail ruins the film first. The second thing to ruin the film is the fact that not one thing makes any sense whatsoever. First we think it’s going to coincide with its predecessor (which it so obviously should do), but when so many things change, I found that “The Ring” became pointless. The only reason for seeing the prequel first would be to see the dreaded video all the way through. Otherwise, anyone who sees this (those who’ve seen the first one and those who have not) will have no idea what is going on or why.
In fact, to be quite honest, I laughed. I laughed a lot, sometimes embarrassing myself in the theatre. There were a couple of scenes that were crucial to setting the mood and making me stay scared and I laughed during both. That’s saying a whole heck of a lot about the director, Hideo Nakata, who can’t possibly have meant for this to be a psycho-logical thriller. Because to be psychological, you’d have to be able to make a probable conclusion about the plot through mental thought and possible application. With a film a senseless as this, your conclusion is as “probable” as the next person’s.
The way this unfolds is pretty stupid, frankly. We have a series of “unsettling” scenes that consist of loud noises and flashy editing and rambunctious deer. Yes, that last one is totally true. Nothing makes sense; absolutely nothing. When Nakata tries to explain something it just makes you mad because the explanation is ludicrous.
Here, the plot is that that disgusting little girl from the first one is back, but this time it’s not to kill Rachel (Naomi Watts) or Aidan (David Dorfman), but to take over Aidan's body. How or why this is so is debatable. I like to think it’s because a couple of filmmakers were bored. *