THE RING 2
Directed by Hideo Nakata
Certificate 15

This is the follow-up to 2002’s smash American horror The Ring (which itself was a remake of the Japanese movie Ring).
The first film followed young mother Rachel Keller (Naomi Watts - pictured) as she discovered that anyone who watched a creepy videotape ended up dead within a week, thanks to the curse from a young lank-haired girl named Samara.
Rachel and her son have since fled to a small town, leaving the curse behind them. Or have they? The opening scene says otherwise, as a teenage boy tries to convince a young girl to watch the same tape as a way of him dodging the curse and her getting the full whammy of it instead.
Soon Rachel realises that Samara’s curse is back in business, and that she and the clearly unstable spectre of Samara are battling for the soul of Rachel’s wide-eyed son Aidan (David Dorfman).
While the first movie, as directed by Gore Verbinski, was a slick Hollywood horror that retained some of the Japanese original’s style, this sequel is a different proposition altogether.
Hideo Nakata, who made the Japanese Ring and Ring 2, is in the director’s chair and delivers very stylish set pieces that make this film seem more like an arthouse movie than a chiller. That’s all well and good, but it means many of the scares have gone out of the window, along with the plot sense.
Anyone who hasn’t seen the original movie will be left scratching their heads wondering what all the fuss is about, while fans may not get the chills they were hoping for, but will at least have picked the more entertaining sequel of the week to enjoy.