After "Ringu" knocked my socks off a few years ago, I was very much looking forward to the sequel, but not really sure where they were going to take the story. It would have been all too easy to simply take the Sadako character after the immense impact she had to the climax of the first film, and make a horror movie where she goes on a rampage of death and destruction. As it turned out, the creators took a much more subtle approach, choosing to continue with the first films creepy atmosphere and mystery. Unfortunately, "Ringu 2" doesn't match up to the original on almost any level and I feel it massively over-complicates the scenario.
The good news is that the film "feels" very much like the first one. Nearly all of the actors have returned and the story just continues exactly where it left off. The police are still trying to figure out what is behind the strange deaths and who the body that was found in the well belonged to. Scientists are also looking into the phenomena, which brings a different spin to it. One of the survivors from "Ringu" can be found in the psychiatric ward, petrified by TVs. Reiko (the star of the first film) and Yoichi (the little boy) are also involved, and this all makes "Ringu 2" a living, breathing part of the series. The challenge was always going to be finding a way to scare the audience a second time and this is where I feel they have failed. But not through a lack of trying! With "Ringu", once you accepted that someone would die a week after viewing the tape, the rest of the film (apart from one of the main character's ability to read minds to move to plot forward) was intensely frightening and real. The second film unfortunately takes further liberties, with another couple of characters suddenly gaining special powers and Sadako starting to appear in random scenes for shock value alone. A character that died in the first movie appears as an apparition to help Mai and the little boy appears as an apparition even though he is still alive. This just doesn't work as well in my opinion with the viewer's ability to suspend disbelief made far more difficult. I can't help but think they should have stuck to the world they'd created in the first movie, without over-complicating things. There's no need to explain how Sadako does what she does and yet they spend far too much time analysing it instead of letting her mystery and shocking appearance do its work.
These flaws included, I still found the film to be somewhat creepy and mildly entertaining. The minimalist approach to music and sound still works well. The acting is passable in the most but certainly not exceptional. I don't completely understand everything that happened, particularly towards the end but I get the general idea. It's simply another case where the cast and crew have made a decent, honourable attempt at a sequel, yet fallen a fair way short of the original, which turns out to be exactly what happened to the American remakes as well.
The good news is that the film "feels" very much like the first one. Nearly all of the actors have returned and the story just continues exactly where it left off. The police are still trying to figure out what is behind the strange deaths and who the body that was found in the well belonged to. Scientists are also looking into the phenomena, which brings a different spin to it. One of the survivors from "Ringu" can be found in the psychiatric ward, petrified by TVs. Reiko (the star of the first film) and Yoichi (the little boy) are also involved, and this all makes "Ringu 2" a living, breathing part of the series. The challenge was always going to be finding a way to scare the audience a second time and this is where I feel they have failed. But not through a lack of trying! With "Ringu", once you accepted that someone would die a week after viewing the tape, the rest of the film (apart from one of the main character's ability to read minds to move to plot forward) was intensely frightening and real. The second film unfortunately takes further liberties, with another couple of characters suddenly gaining special powers and Sadako starting to appear in random scenes for shock value alone. A character that died in the first movie appears as an apparition to help Mai and the little boy appears as an apparition even though he is still alive. This just doesn't work as well in my opinion with the viewer's ability to suspend disbelief made far more difficult. I can't help but think they should have stuck to the world they'd created in the first movie, without over-complicating things. There's no need to explain how Sadako does what she does and yet they spend far too much time analysing it instead of letting her mystery and shocking appearance do its work.
These flaws included, I still found the film to be somewhat creepy and mildly entertaining. The minimalist approach to music and sound still works well. The acting is passable in the most but certainly not exceptional. I don't completely understand everything that happened, particularly towards the end but I get the general idea. It's simply another case where the cast and crew have made a decent, honourable attempt at a sequel, yet fallen a fair way short of the original, which turns out to be exactly what happened to the American remakes as well.