ix months after the events of the first Ring film, Rachel (Watts) and her son Aidan (Dorfman) have relocated to a sleepy Northwestern town and are attempting to rebuild their lives. While Aidan remains as creepy and alienated as ever, Rachel distracts herself with mundane stories at the local newspaper, only to stumble across reports of a crime scene where one of the victims apparently died from watching a mysterious videotape. Recognizing the telltale signs of Samara, the malevolent force that terrorized her only months before, Rachel infiltrates the crime scene, absconds with the videotape and burns it.
When Rachel arrives home, she discovers Aidan in the throes of a nightmare. She successfully comforts him, but Aidan also knows that Samara has returned, and fears she will take possession of his body. He soon captures images to that effect with his camera, but it's too late—Samara is determined to return to the world of the living, and will sacrifice any number of lives to do so. As she continues to overtake Aidan's living functions, Rachel becomes increasingly desperate to save her son. But when she takes him to a hospital for medical care, the suspicious staff sequester Aidan and refuse to grant Rachel access to him.
With no clues but those she uncovered long ago in the past, Rachel sets out to uncover the secrets behind Samara's demise and hopefully save her son. What she soon discovers, however, is that in order for her to vanquish the evil once and for all, she must sacrifice her own son.
Rings truer than its predecessor
Until the release of The Ring Two, two disparate sensibilities sharing screen time in the recent flux of American-made Japanese horror pictures—namely, Asian eccentricity and Tinseltown star wattage—have never effectively meshed. But filmmaker Hideo Nakata, collaborating for the first time with Ring star Naomi Watts, makes a captivating chiller that tugs at the heartstrings as much as it does at the hairs on the back of your neck. Working from a script by Ehren Kruger that translates the impenetrable logic of Japanese horror for international audiences, the pair render a sequel that not only matches but exceeds the horrific power of its predecessor.
Miraculously, Nakata (who created the original Ring film before Kruger got his mitts on it) finds a perfect balance between the American and Asian interpretations of his work, and creates a story that's quite simply stunning in its brilliance. For example, who would have thought that David Dorfman, the kid from the first film, could possibly be any creepier than he'd already proved himself? Nakata, evidently; he not only allows Dorfman more of those moments of preternatural maturity (he calls his mom "Rachel"), but adds a fuller range of dialogue to the kid's plate, leading to the terrifying revelation that he loves his mommy (scarier words have never been spoken).
Further to that end, Nakata enlists Sissy Spacek to play Samara's institutionalized mother, which ranks as one of the most inspired casting choices in horror-movie history; who else but Carrie herself could portray the nutjob who cast out her daughter and later indirectly led generations of other mommies to attempt infanticide? But rather than dwelling on these potential instances of stunt casting, the director keeps the drama on a short leash, and lets cheap opportunities for suspense pass by in favor of more satisfying blowouts.
