From Scary VHS to Sleepy DVD
Let’s be clear: The Ring Two had everything going for it. It was the sequel to a massive horror hit, it had Naomi Watts returning, it even had the original Ringu director Hideo Nakata stepping in for Gore Verbinski. This should have been a slam dunk. Instead, it’s like watching someone try to dunk a basketball into a kiddie pool—awkward, sad, and guaranteed to splash everyone in the front row.
The first film was a modern gothic—creepy imagery, a curse that spread like a virus, a pale little girl climbing out of your TV to murder you. This sequel? It gave us deer. Yes, deer. Snorting, glaring, CGI deer. Samara, the spectral menace of the first movie, somehow gets upstaged by Bambi and his angry cousins.
The Plot: Samara Needs a Hug
The movie starts with a teenage boy trying to trick his girlfriend into watching the tape. She closes her eyes—proving the most effective defense against Samara is just don’t look. Naturally, the kid dies anyway, and Samara’s back on the hunt. Rachel (Naomi Watts) and her perpetually damp son Aidan (David Dorfman) have moved to Astoria, Oregon, which is apparently ground zero for supernatural nonsense.
Soon, Aidan develops bruises, hypothermia, and a thousand-yard stare that makes Haley Joel Osment look well-adjusted. The kid spends most of the movie whispering like he’s auditioning for a ghost tour. Rachel suspects Samara is trying to possess him, and she’s right. Cue endless bathtub scenes, hallucinations, and Rachel screaming “What do you want from me?!” while Samara smirks from every reflective surface like a mall goth photobombing your Instagram.
By the end, Rachel voluntarily yeets herself into Samara’s well-world—yes, literally climbing down the cursed well—to have a final showdown with the world’s wettest little girl. Rachel locks the well, Samara gets stuck, and life goes on. Until the next sequel nobody asked for.
Samara: From Horror Icon to Wet Blanket
In the first movie, Samara was terrifying: that slow crawl out of the TV, her hair dangling in black strings, her sudden lunge at the camera. In The Ring Two, she’s downgraded from horror icon to clingy ex-girlfriend.
She doesn’t stalk; she sulks. She doesn’t terrify; she tantrums. She spends the whole movie trying to possess Aidan like a bratty child who wants a new doll. “I want to be your mommy,” she whines, which is less scary and more like a Lifetime Original about custody disputes.
Aidan: The Creepy Kid Nobody Wants to Babysit
David Dorfman plays Aidan as if he’s already half-dead. The kid is pale, monotone, and constantly whispering cryptic nonsense. He’s supposed to be eerie, but mostly he just looks like he needs a nap, a hot meal, and maybe some vitamin D.
Rachel spends the film defending herself against child abuse accusations because Aidan is covered in bruises. Honestly, if I were the social worker, I’d be less worried about Rachel and more worried about the fact that Aidan’s hobbies include staring blankly into corners and letting dead girls move in rent-free.
The Deer Scene: A True Horror Classic (For All the Wrong Reasons)
Let’s talk about the scene everyone remembers—and not fondly. Rachel and Aidan are driving when a herd of deer surround their car. But instead of fleeing like normal deer, these CGI abominations glare, stomp, and launch a full-on kamikaze assault.
It looks like a rejected Final Destination death, animated by interns. At one point, a deer rams the car windshield, looking less like an animal and more like a drunk uncle headbutting a vending machine. It’s not scary. It’s not funny. It’s… confusing. Was Samara controlling the deer? Were they just naturally jerks? The film never explains. And that’s the highlight of the movie.
Supporting Cast: Wasted Talent Anonymous
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Simon Baker as Max Rourke: Plays Rachel’s editor. His main job is to walk into scenes, look concerned, and die offscreen. You can practically see him calculating if The Mentalist will save his career.
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Sissy Spacek as Evelyn Borden: Yes, Carrie herself shows up in a psychiatric hospital, mutters some cryptic lines about drowning babies, and leaves. It’s like the producers said, “What if we got an Oscar nominee to deliver fortune cookie horror advice?”
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Elizabeth Perkins as Dr. Temple: A psychiatrist who suspects Rachel is abusing Aidan. She’s right about something being very wrong here, just not in the way she thinks. Samara disposes of her, because apparently the ghost hates mandated reporters.
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Mary Elizabeth Winstead: Blink and you’ll miss her, but yes, this was her debut. Everyone has to start somewhere, I guess.
Direction: Lost in Translation
Bringing in Hideo Nakata, the director of the original Ringu, should have been genius. Instead, it feels like he got lost somewhere between Japanese atmospheric horror and Hollywood jump scares. The movie lurches from cheap shocks to soggy melodrama, never deciding if it wants to be creepy, tragic, or a bad episode of The X-Files.
The color palette is still gray-blue, but instead of evoking dread, it just looks like the cinematographer accidentally left a sad Instagram filter on the lens.
Why It Fails
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Samara lost her mystique. She’s no longer a symbol of unstoppable doom; she’s just a needy ghost child.
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Too much Aidan. Creepy kids work in small doses. This kid is a full meal of undercooked weirdness.
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The deer. I can’t stress this enough. The deer look like PlayStation 2 villains.
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Wasted cast. Sissy Spacek could’ve elevated the film, but she’s wasted. Naomi Watts does her best, but even she looks exhausted by the script.
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Tone. It’s caught between supernatural horror, domestic drama, and unintentional comedy. The result is a tonal train wreck.
The Legacy: From VHS to Trash Bin
The Ring Two made money, but no one really loved it. It’s remembered less as a horror film and more as a cautionary tale of how not to follow up a hit. By the time Rings (2017) rolled around, the franchise had already lost its bite. Samara went from cultural phenomenon to “Oh yeah, I remember her.”
It’s ironic: the cursed tape killed its viewers in seven days. The sequel killed the franchise in under two hours.
Final Thoughts: Unwound and Unscary
The Ring Two is a masterclass in how to drain the terror out of a monster. It takes one of the most iconic horror villains of the early 2000s and turns her into a soggy, needy child ghost who wants a playdate. It turns Naomi Watts into a frazzled soccer mom. It turns deer into unintentional comedy legends.
It’s not terrifying. It’s not thrilling. It’s not even enjoyably bad—it’s just wet, tired, and smelly. Like Samara, this movie crawls out of the TV, but instead of killing you, it just makes you check your watch.
