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 ‘Ring Two’ combines eerie with absurd A Review By Monique Bos Samara’s back, and this time she’s out for more than just blood … she wants to return to life. The creepy child (Kelly Stables) who crawled out of television screens in “The Ring” surfaces in Astoria, Ore., where Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts) and her son Aidan (David Dorfman) have fled, following the events of the first movie. Keller is working at the local paper when she hears about a probable homicide, which in itself is unusual enough for what viewers have just learned is a sleepy small town, but in this case the body was found in a partially flooded house. Keller rushes to the crime scene in time to see the victim’s shocked girlfriend and intended dupe (Emily VanCamp) led out by police officers, and she manages to sneak into the unattended ambulance to get a look at the corpse’s face. His expression of shock confirms Keller’s fears, and she contrives to converse with the girlfriend and sneak back into the house to destroy the videotape before the curse can continue. So much for the videotape plot, which was essential in the first movie but serves only as a vehicle to introduce Samara in the sequel (and leaves a loose end that might prove convenient for a third movie). Perhaps in destroying the tape, Keller frees Samara. At any rate, Samara manages to transcend electronics and invade Keller’s reality, attempting to take possession of Aidan’s body. Keller’s quest to defeat Samara takes her to the farm where Samara died, the home for unwed mothers where she was born — and where a possible supernatural aspect in Samara’s past is introduced — and finally an institution, where Samara’s birth mother (Sissy Spacek) offers a troubling directive. What makes “The Ring Two” genuinely creepy — more than its predecessor — are its inversions of our perceptions of motherhood. The strangely prescient Aidan is more parental and adult than his mom, whom he addresses by her first name. Keller, who frantically claims to love her son, shows no qualms about leaving him alone at night while she is off chasing a story, and she lets him wander around a strange carnival by himself. Samara’s mother (and, Keller learns, a series of other mothers over the years) behaved in a way contrary to maternal instincts and instructs Keller to do the same. The childhood possession angle is also eerily effective, thanks largely to Dorfman’s skilled acting. He communicates Samara’s takeover of Aidan’s body through eye blinks, head movements and preternatural calmness and provides an effective foil for the film’s mounting action. However, director Hideo Nakata fails to sustain a consistent pitch of dread, due largely to an inexplicably stupid scene in which Keller and Aidan are assaulted by a herd of angry deer while driving down a mountain road. Nakata may have intended to draw a parallel to the highly disturbing horse scene in the first movie, and apparently the deer also have some connection with Samara because her parents’ basement is filled with antlers. Regardless, when an entire theater audience erupts into derisive laughter, the movie is bound to lose much of its momentum. “The Ring Two” provides enough grotesque moments to frighten some viewers, and others will find rich fodder for mockery in the film’s unexplained plot convolutions. Those seeking an intelligent treatment of a scary theme, however, will find themselves disappointed. |
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