Don't cite me on this, but I suspect fear is rooted in the perception of impotency, the utter inability to alter the future. In horror films impotency is a driving force and a feeling shared by the audience. Which is worse: that the characters are blindly marching toward their annihilation or that you can do nothing but helplessly watch their destruction?
This is what made The Ring so effective. It tortured us for tempting prophecy: Who wouldn't be curious about a videotape so scary that people would die seven days after seeing it? As the characters try to make amends for their trespasses, their helplessness grows with each passing day. Then all of a sudden it's over. It becomes clear how futile the struggle has been, short of Faustian bargain.
Too bad Hideo Nakata's The Ring Two doesn't have the same malevolence as its predecessor. The film takes place six months after the first movie. Rachel Keller, played with conviction by Naomi Watts, has quietly settled into the Oregon town of Astoria, with her son Aidan, played by David Darfont, a member of the illustrious line of child actors who play creepy little kids. Everything would be rosy if it weren't for Samara, the vengeful spirit they encountered in the first film, and her evil videotape turning up again.
The movie has its "BOO!" moments: Samara's first on screen appearance was sudden and terrible. Yet, I can't help but wonder how much of the film's effect rests on the audience having seen the first film. In the opening sequence, a teenage boy, who has seen the tape before, anxiously tries to get his date to watch the video. From the first movie, the only way to break the seven day death rule is to make a copy of the tape and show it to someone else, a kind of demented chain letter.
He's not kidding when he tells her, "You have to watch the tape." Yet I doubt his desperation would feel as convincing without residual memory from the previous film.
Also, it is implicit that Aidan having survived the first film meant he had to have shown the tape to someone else. The movie never seriously deals with the morality of this decision. It is introduced and dismissed with the lines, "We did what anyone else would have done."
Even worse, the script decides to make Samara tragic. It seems all she wanted was a mother who would love her. Thus Rachel's efforts to destroy her feel callous, almost malicious. It's hard to be scared of someone if you feel sorry for her.
But Hideo Nakata's direction is not without its merits. Horror as a genre provides fertile ground for imagery, as it deals with the wild, dark corners of our imagination and psyche. There's a strange beauty to some of the set pieces, including a bathtub sequence in which the water rises to the ceiling, before it all comes down like a biblical flood.
In the end, whether or not you'll like The Ring Two depends on whether or not you liked The Ring. After seeing The Ring Two, however, it'd be best if the entire American Ring franchise has finally come full circle and could now be laid to rest.
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