The unrated edition of "The Ring Two," available to viewers in DVD, eclipses its theatrical twin in concept, depth, and execution. This version of the film, when coupled with its slick 16 minute featurette, "Rings." and clever use of Internet marketing proves that modern cinema is successfully morphing into an original form of home entertainment that complements, but does not replace, the unique joy of first-run theater-going. It is, as they say, a thrilling time to be a movie buff.
Countless films in the psycho-thriller, terror, and horror genres have been compared to Hitchcock's masterworks ad nausea. "The Ring" and "The Ring Two" standout, however, as exemplars of the Master's craft of deliberate pacing, modulated effects in light and shadow, overhead camera shots, rich visual symbolism, and the smoldering crescendo of a frenzied plot without the exploitive and obligatory violence that disfigures run-of-the-mill slasher-hacker features. "The Ring" and "The Ring Two," just like Samara, project fear mostly into the mind's eye, not the screen.
The protagonists in "The Ring Two" no longer find themselves encumbered by the linear countdown of seven days, threatening to tick them into oblivion. Instead, a timeless, ethereal quality pervades the film in the form of a persistent human tragedy that runs deep into their, and our, collective psyche, making everyone question their perceptions of reality. This is a metaphysical film. Just where and how does Samara exist in the natural and supernatural order-something her birth mother, Evelyn (Sissy Spacek), describes as the "waters beyond this life?" Is it in the videotape? Is it in the infinite, quantum dimensions of time and space, or the dark recesses of our minds? Is it in the chemical fusions and mutations that occur in our DNA and RNA (has anyone noticed that Rachel, Noah and Aidan derive their initials from this special spiral), or in the alchemical synthesis of earth (carbon), air or wind (nitrogen), fire (hydrogen), which defines Aidan's Celtic name, and Samara's life-giving (and taking) well water (oxygen)? Is it in some mad scientist's laboratory or in an alien's mothership? Is young Samara's alter ego a warped antithesis of the Cabbala's higher Twin self run amok? Look for the symbols. They're there--in twins, cats, stags, marbles, water (lots of it, to be sure), flies, big fish pursuing small fish (as in Aidan's artwork, aquarium, and cartoons), in burning trees, light towers, expansion bridges, apples, horses, rocket ships, UFOs, ladders, masks, lunar and solar eclipses, televisions and other reflective surfaces, electromagnetic fields, and yes, of course, in mystical wells, springs, and rings (spirals and loops!), and more.
So why does Samara exist? Is she, herself, the innocent victim of a wretched curse or horrible possession? Does she symbolize the original sin of institutionally repressed feminism forced into a metaphorical well of obscurity? Is Samara the next step in human evolution or is she someone's (or some entity's) ill-conceived hybrid solution for a species determined to be defective and fated for extinction? Whatever awaits her, Samara reminds us that no one, especially no child, deserves to be mistreated. Conversely, every child ought to be valued--even cherished--regardless of race, creed, color, nationality, religion, gender, or infirmity, etc. Samara also reminds us that evil begets evil.
Is young Samara (Daviegh Chase in archive footage) really the antagonist? Seated on the sofa in her adopted home in Astoria, and speaking through Aidan (David Dorfman), she offers herself as Rachel's protector. Protector from what? Perhaps her alter ego, the festering Samara of rage and confusion that symbolizes so many helpless children who cannot control their feelings, as catalyzed from a vicious cycle of parental abuse, neglect, resentment, abandonment, institutional carelessness, and the disingenuous deceptions of insidious others. If "the dead do not dream," and if they "wait to get in" than sleeping beauty, the young Samara (whose Hebraic name translates to "watch, preservation, guarded by God"), and her consort, Aidan (whose Hebraic variant, "Aitan," translates to "fights for possession"), tell Rachel Keller (whose first name, translated from Hebrew, connotes the "purity of an ewe or lamb," and Germanic last name translates to "cellar [well] keeper") what she must do to end the infernal cycle and reckless pursuit of retribution. It is the same solution that the infant Samara (or whoever or whatever may be possessing her) urged her natural mother, Evelyn (derived from Eve, "life" the first created woman) to do earlier, and what an eight year old Samara (symbolically aged to denote the concept of "rebirth" from the Venus cycle) later urges her adopted mother, Anna ("Grace or gracious," mother of Mary-Miri, Mari, Mara, and the variant, Sa-Mara--which, in Hebrew, also translates to "bitter or rising waters") to do: "Take me to the place that [I] fear the most, the place where [I] believe [I] will be killed (or sacrificed)." Before attempting to exorcise young Samara's possessive spirit from Aidan in her baptismal bathtub, ironically serving as her watery casket, a tortured Rachel (superbly performed by Naomi Watts) emotes her overwhelming sorrow and regret for what she must do. She exhorts, "I love you, baby...but you're not my son." Young Samara is set free again, so we think, but she empties herself down the drain well. She does not dissipate into the air. Fire and water, and heaven and earth, are separated. The masculine is allowed to live freely, again, in the earthly, physical realm but without the feminine essence of the Shechinah (Holy Spirit), while the feminine is cast down into the watery abyss, entrapped from the earthly, physical and the heavenly, spiritual realms, forsaking the delicate balance between heaven and earth, and the complementary Oneness of male and female.
If you haven't watched "Rings," do so. If you did see this fabulous short piece, ask yourself this: How innocent are Emily (Emily VanCamp) and Jake (Ryan Merriman) and his circle of friends? Did the "circle" not conspire to keep Jake from copying and passing on the cursed videotape in order to find-out what happens on day 7? Was Emily really interested in striking a relationship with Jake after four years of evasion? If you paid attention to the clocks in "Rings" (and "The Ring Two"), you might have noticed that even the so-called malevolent older, twin spirit of Samara (convincingly played by Kelly Stables) manipulates dimensional time and space to give Jake an extra hour to resolve his dilemma (if he can), despite having attacked her on his television set and then indignantly photographing her! Or was Samara just using Jake to exact punishment on a conniving Emily, too, before re-establishing contact with Rachel and Aidan! See, again, what you may have missed before! Kudos to Suzuki, Takahashi, Verbinski, Nakata, and Kruger for their magical writing and direction, and to Hans Zimmer for his haunting score. Brilliant!
Much closer to "Ringu" then "The Ring" ever was
Within the past year I have become full on obsessed with the Horror Genre starting with "The Sixth Sense". Now it would have been smart to work up to something like "The Ring" but I didn't. I watched it right after "The Sixth Sense" thinking it couldn't be much scarier then THAT, right? WRONG. It scared me out of my MIND (I couldn't sleep alone or with the light off until a good while after my Day 7 had past). So right after that I got "Ringu" and watched it. At first I was let down because "Ringu" is nowhere NEAR as scary as "The Ring" and is also very different in feel. But slowly it grew on me and I've come to love it dearly for putting "creep" ahead of "scare."
Then "Ring 2" came out in Theatres. Before I went to see it I had done extensive digging online about it so I knew that Hideo Nakata would be directing it and that Daveigh Chase (Samara from "The Ring") was no longer in the cast (this made me very upset). Even if I hadn't known that Nakata-san directed this movie going in I would have figured it out just from the Opening of the film; The Ocean. They Opened in a VERY obvious and wonderful "Ringu" tie-in which made me so happy! However the rest of the movie (in its THEATRE RELEASE) disappointed me greatly. It felt chopy, not thought out, and rushed things which is something that's NOWHERE to be found in "The Ring", it was incredibly well thought out and dense in plot. But what bothered me the most in "Ring 2" was the image overlays of Daveigh that they used in the film. It was cheap, tacky, and friggin distracting (since I could tell you the exact scene, moment, and frame that the images were taken from in "The Ring", what can I say? I'm obsessed). Not only do I think Kelly Stables did just fine as Samara but she doesn't really look like Daveigh so when the overlays are used it's PAINFULLY noticable. Just how dumb did they think their audience was? They could of just kept her hair in her face the whole time and no one would have been the wiser but noooooooooooooooooooo.
So after all this bashing, why the 4 Star Rating? Because this ISN'T the Theatre Release of the movie.
I was in the store with my mom and a whole shelf of "Ring 2" DVDs caught my eye. I didn't know if I'd buy one since the movie wasn't so great but then I saw the little sticker that read "Unrated Extended Edition" on all their front covers. Needless to say I grabed the nearest DVD and refussed to let it go 'til mom bought it for me. I took it home, watched it, and was blown away. The 20 or so minutes of added footage make all the difference in this film. No more chopyness, no more bad pacing which of course takes care of the rushed problem as well. This version of the film is also much more like "Ringu" in feel then "The Ring" was. It's all about SLOWLY building up to the last few moments of the movie.
Also I would like to point out that although the Deer are horridly CGIed, 'tis true, but they aren't random. Watch "The Ring" and "Ring 2" VERY CLOSELY and you'll see the connection. You just have to use your BRAIN to figure it out.
So bad CGI and overlays aside this version of "Ring 2" is VERY good, very creepy, and WELL worth the money.
piece of crap!!!
Wow this is horrible! The acting was so bad and it wasn't even scary! Why the freakin' hell did they have to use CGI for the scene with the deer? It looked so godawful and FAKE! The movie altogether was just boring and cliched and the filmakers who made it should be shot! I hate these modern day horror films such as a lousy remake of Dawn of the Dead that barely even had ANY shocking scenes to get Rated R! When it comes to making horror movies Hollywood sucks the big one!! Hollywood stop making these! They suck! Leave good horror to people like Stephen King Clive Barker and George A. Romero! Heck even Rob Zombie makes better horror than this piece of monkey crap! I recommend The Devils Rejects instead of this! It's so much better! Skip this crap! Leave it to Hollywood to screw up the horror category!
It's not the scary hit that The Ring was in 2002, but The Grudge makes a similarly convincing case for American remakes of popular Japanese horror films. Barely a year passed between the release of Takashi Shimizu's creepy ghost story Ju-On: The Grudge and the production of this American remake, set in Tokyo and starring Sarah Michelle Gellar in her first post-Buffy horror film. About the only significant difference between the two films is the importing of a mostly-American cast (including Bill Pullman, Clea DuVall and Grace Zabriskie), but The Grudge was reconfigured (by screenwriter Stephen Susco) to allow Shimizu to refine and improve the spookiest highlights of his earlier version, which enjoyed previous incarnations as a short film and two... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Sarah Michelle Gellar - Jason Behr - Clea DuVall Director(s): Takashi Shimizu DVD Release Date: Released the 01 February 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Dakota Fanning--the elfin star of Uptown Girls, The Cat in the Hat, and Man on Fire--trades in her blond locks for a semi-gothic brunette do in Hide and Seek. Fanning plays Emily, a young girl whose mother commits suicide. To help Emily through the trauma, her father David (Robert DeNiro), a psychologist, takes her to an isolated house in upstate New York. But instead of healing, Emily gets dark circles under her eyes, mutilates her favorite doll, and develops an imaginary friend named Charlie. In no time at all, things get spooky and David suspects this imaginary friend isn't so friendly. Hide and Seek owes a lot to The Shining, but whether the creepiness is borrowed or not, there's a decent dose of it (though the twist at the end is unlikely to... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Robert De Niro - Dakota Fanning - Famke Janssen - Elisabeth Shue Director(s): John Polson DVD Release Date: Released the 05 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Most horror movies establish an atmosphere of normalcy, which they gradually rupture with spooky or creepy or stomach-churning images. The Amityville Horror--a remake of the 1979 movie about a possessed house that torments the family that moves into it--tosses normalcy out the window in the first five minutes, unleashing a nonstop barrage of unsettling camera angles, decaying wood and stained wallpaper, half-glimpsed shadows in motion, fast edits of grotesque ghosts, and dozens of other horror-movie devices. Whether you like the movie will depend on whether you like feeling slightly nauseated and cut off from any semblance of reality--for many people, that's why they go to horror movies. Others won't be able to suspend disbelief that anyone but an actor would spend the time... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ryan Reynolds - Melissa George - Jimmy Bennett (III) Director(s): Andrew Douglas (IV) DVD Release Date: Released the 04 October 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Brutal and breathtaking, Sin City is Robert Rodriguez's stunningly realized vision of Frank Miller's pulpy comic books. In the first of three separate but loosely related stories, Marv (Mickey Rourke in heavy makeup) tries to track down the killers of a woman who ended up dead in his bed. In the second story, Dwight's (Clive Owen) attempt to defend a woman from a brutal abuser goes horribly wrong, and threatens to destroy the uneasy truce among the police, the mob, and the women of Old Town. Finally, an aging cop on his last day on the job (Bruce Willis) rescues a young girl from a kidnapper, but is himself thrown in jail. Years later, he has a chance to save her again.
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In the grand scheme of theological thrillers, Constantine aspires for the greatness of The Exorcist but ranks more closely with The Order. Based on the popular Hellblazer comic book series, and directed with nary a shred of intelligence by music video veteran Francis Lawrence, it's basically The Matrix with swarming demons instead of swarming machines. Keanu Reeves slightly modifies his Matrix persona as John Constantine, who roams the dark-spots of Los Angeles looking for good-evil, angel-devil half-breeds to ensure that "the balance" between God and Satan is properly maintained. An ancient artifact and the detective twin of a woman who committed evil-induced suicide (Rachel Weisz) factor into the plot, which is taken so seriously that you'll... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Keanu Reeves - Rachel Weisz - Djimon Hounsou Director(s): Francis Lawrence (II) DVD Release Date: Released the 19 July 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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