**Warning: may contain mild spoilers**
The Ring Two may not be a completely missed opportunity but I feel it could have been so much better. I am sure the fact that this movie tops at the box office is almost entirely due to the reputation of the first movie which is much better.
I left the theater with no aftertaste from a creepy feeling - which I was in fact looking forward to. What lingered on instead was the memory of the endless shots of Naomi Watts' and David Dorfman's faces. Naomi Watts hits the right note looking a mixture between scared, upset and angry. David Dorfman isn't bad at all for a child actor but the "posession" clearly was too much for him to handle and I never saw Samara looking through his face except for the makeup and he (she) calling her "Mommy" instead of "Rachel". The trouble might be Hideo Hakata's direction - he couldn't come up with different vocal mannerisms for Aidan (Dorfman) to channel Samara.
There is no storyline at all here except for the one where Samara wants to become alive through possessing the body of Aidan and how his mother tries to fight back. There is no background story to speak of and Rachel's research on Samara's life is totally nonsensical.
Samara's powers are also completely nonsensical to say nothing of her institutionalized mother Evelyn played by Sissy Spacek who talks the typical crazy gibberish containing deep meaning and messages. I really didn't care to analyze any of it. It was clear that it all has been hammered out too fast.
There at least two huge plot holes which I was unable to swallow (this probably is discussed elsewhere):
1) Aidan (possesed by Samara) flees unseen from the hospital after killing the psychiatrist through telepathy and no one comes after him even though the authorities are alarmed and very specific about Rachel not seeing him since they (mistakenly) suspect child abuse.
2) Rachel is willing to "kill" his son by drowning him in a bathtub so that Samara goes out of his body. Doesn't sound like much of a plan to me. The Samara part: O.K. but the loving mother does not think one second how to prevent her son from dying and she does not even make any attempt at reanimation or get the water out of his lungs. Or does she know much more about the supernatural than she admits? I don't think so.
The only sequence I really liked was at the Farmer's Market including the very effective bathroom mirror scene.
I sadly missed all the creepy symbolism of the fist "Ring" that seems to know more about our collective subconsciousness than we do.
Rachel's line: "I'm not your *beep* mother!" sounds like something written for Sigourney Weaver in the "Alien" series.
This is too few material for a second feature film. I feel compelled to saying that I would accept this only as "new additional footage" in a special DVD edition of "The Ring (1)".
The Ring Two may not be a completely missed opportunity but I feel it could have been so much better. I am sure the fact that this movie tops at the box office is almost entirely due to the reputation of the first movie which is much better.
I left the theater with no aftertaste from a creepy feeling - which I was in fact looking forward to. What lingered on instead was the memory of the endless shots of Naomi Watts' and David Dorfman's faces. Naomi Watts hits the right note looking a mixture between scared, upset and angry. David Dorfman isn't bad at all for a child actor but the "posession" clearly was too much for him to handle and I never saw Samara looking through his face except for the makeup and he (she) calling her "Mommy" instead of "Rachel". The trouble might be Hideo Hakata's direction - he couldn't come up with different vocal mannerisms for Aidan (Dorfman) to channel Samara.
There is no storyline at all here except for the one where Samara wants to become alive through possessing the body of Aidan and how his mother tries to fight back. There is no background story to speak of and Rachel's research on Samara's life is totally nonsensical.
Samara's powers are also completely nonsensical to say nothing of her institutionalized mother Evelyn played by Sissy Spacek who talks the typical crazy gibberish containing deep meaning and messages. I really didn't care to analyze any of it. It was clear that it all has been hammered out too fast.
There at least two huge plot holes which I was unable to swallow (this probably is discussed elsewhere):
1) Aidan (possesed by Samara) flees unseen from the hospital after killing the psychiatrist through telepathy and no one comes after him even though the authorities are alarmed and very specific about Rachel not seeing him since they (mistakenly) suspect child abuse.
2) Rachel is willing to "kill" his son by drowning him in a bathtub so that Samara goes out of his body. Doesn't sound like much of a plan to me. The Samara part: O.K. but the loving mother does not think one second how to prevent her son from dying and she does not even make any attempt at reanimation or get the water out of his lungs. Or does she know much more about the supernatural than she admits? I don't think so.
The only sequence I really liked was at the Farmer's Market including the very effective bathroom mirror scene.
I sadly missed all the creepy symbolism of the fist "Ring" that seems to know more about our collective subconsciousness than we do.
Rachel's line: "I'm not your *beep* mother!" sounds like something written for Sigourney Weaver in the "Alien" series.
This is too few material for a second feature film. I feel compelled to saying that I would accept this only as "new additional footage" in a special DVD edition of "The Ring (1)".