The Ring Two: Critic Reviews

A bottomless well of murky wetness out of which no woman emerges unpunished.

Despite Mr. Nakata's track record and the radiant presence of its star, Naomi Watts, The Ring Two is a dud.

As in the first movie, there's a lot to the plot that doesn't make sense if analyzed closely, and, as in the first, the end is particularly implausible. But overall, the second Ring is more entertaining.

This is a campy scream-a-thon in which you can alternate between freaking and cackling.

Appears to have been written on a large piece of blank paper by chickens with their feet dipped in ink.

The Ring Two, which, despite being made by Hideo Nakata, who directed the original Japanese movie, is almost worse [than The Ring].

The let's-travel-through-the-TV-screen sequence was better in Fat Albert.

An uneven story undermines this horror franchise, despite high-quality performances by Naomi Watts and David Dorfman.

Despite a pedigreed cast and crew, Ring Two might as well be Blair Witch 2.

The new movie's special effects offer scant compensation for its negligible plot, dreary pace and slim characterization.

[Nakata] spends too long reviving nightmares and location shots from The Ring, forgetting that hell must be as fresh as it is rancid.

A perplexing compound of the silly and the glum.

It is like an exercise in cinema mechanics: Images, music, photography and mood conspire to create a sense of danger, even though at any given moment we cannot possibly explain the rules under which that danger might manifest itself.

Overall, it's a film project that follows logically from sequel-itis and box-office greed. And it never rises much above them.

The Ring Two is subtler and slower-moving than the brand of horror to which we are accustomed, but it is nightmarish, in the true sense of the word.

The Ring Two dilutes the dread that the first installment generated and introduces even greater concentrations of plot absurdity.

Almost delivers.

In the first Ring, you watched a videotape and seven days later, you were dead. In the second Ring, you watch a movie and seven minutes later, you're asleep.

Too many loose ends.

A half-intriguing, half-tedious follow-up to DreamWorks' 2002 creepy sleepersleeper.

Borrowing liberally from the Exorcist and Omen movies, and with little regard for credibility, The Ring Two has a familiar ring to it.

The original was a hit in both Japanese and Hollywood incarnations. But the cold-blooded chills of the Japanese movie have now been so watered down as to be simply cold and bloodless.

Tell yourself that it's not a horror movie but a farce -- at times a rousingly ridiculous one -- and you'll save yourself a world of disappointment.

Kruger's script is a typical collection of sprawling, audience-tested shock scenes strung together with a few chunks of exposition for logical coherence.

May not be a masterpiece, but it has its share of thoughtful little angles.