Cover Art

Credits

Director: Hideo Nakata Starring: Naomi Watts, Simon Baker, David Dorfman, Elizabeth Perkins, Gary Cole, Sissy Spacek Screenplay: Ehren Kruger Country:USA

While watching The Ring 2 however, I realized something. Sequel-itis is a bad thing. It is a disease, a scourge, and this film suffers from it, badly. Sometimes it is better to leave a good story alone, and only make a sequel if you have another story to tell.

Six months after the events of The Ring, Rachael Keller (Naomi Watts) and her son, Aiden (David Dorfman) have decided to leave the bad memories of the city behind and move to the quiet town of Astoria. Rachael, through her connections at the Astoria newspaper, hears of a teen death with familiar circumstances, involving a mysterious videotape. Soon Rachael, David and her boss Max (Simon Baker) are involved in a life or death struggle with the vengeful Samara (Kelly Stables) who can escape the confines of her video prison to wreak havoc on their lives.

The first Ring was a great example of how a film from another culture, in this case J-horror, can translate well into the Western ideology. Unfortunately, The Ring 2 comes off as horror-lite. Sure it has some creepy set-pieces, but that's all they are, set ups with no pay off. David Dorfman's Aiden takes the lead in this film, but alas, he is suffering from the same thing that all young stars suffer from. When you are a kid, it is easy to play a kid, but when you are a kid playing something more than a kid, it requires acting skill that in most cases is beyond the abilities of their experience. This is no slight on Dorfman, as he has a hard role in this film that he struggles to pull off. The other roles are wasted as well. Actors like Sissy Spacek (Carrie), Gary Cole (American Gothic) and Elizabeth Perkins (Crazy in Alabama) are thrown away and the normally great Simon Baker (Land of the Dead) is so generic and bland that he could have been played by a piece of bread. I must add though, that Naomi Watts' presence, as always, is a delight.

Next are three, 2 minute-10 second mini-documentaries made to promote the film. The first, 'Imagination in Focus' concentrates on Hideo Nakata, and the impression he has left on both the Ring movies (Asian and Western) and his co-workers. The second, 'Samara – From Eye to Icon' talks about the development of the look of Samara without actually going too far into the make-up effects. The third, 'The Haunting of the Ring 2' is a ridiculous fluff piece about the haunted happening on the set and on location.

'HBO First Look: the Making of Ring 2' is a 13 minute piece showing an abbreviated look at the making of The Ring 2. Don't expect some amazing extravaganza describing the intricacies of special effects in the new millennium, this is a by the numbers documentary for the average movie goer, not the genre fan.

The Deleted and Alternate scenes are just that. Usually when I see these sorts of things I wonder why they were taken out, but these are evident, they would have made the film annoying as well as bad.