BEFORE: Naomi Watts is having a pretty good Movie Year, I must say, as she carries over from "The Ring", and she was also in two of the "Divergent" movies, and "Penguin Bloom" before that and "The International", "Ophelia" and "Infinite Storm" after. So this makes EIGHT movies with her in this calendar year, which puts her on the big board, umm, let's say between Jason Statham and Mark Wahlberg, yeah, that seems about right for this year. It won't be long now until I close up shop for the late fall and re-open for the holidays, just like a hunting lodge. But after Christmas I'll break down who had the most appearances, from 12 down to 3 anyway. Hundreds of actors and non-actors have appeared in two watched movies this year, I won't have space to list them all, so only those with three or more films in 2024 will get name-checked. My rules, I make them up.
But yeah, I'm watching both "Ring" movies within 24 hours, so that's a double dose. If I die six or seven days from now, you'll know what happened to me.
THE PLOT: Six months after the incidents involving the lethal videotape, new clues prove that there is a new evil lurking in the darkness.
AFTER: For some reason, teens are still watching that VHS tape that kills people, I guess because it's 2002 and most reality TV hasn't been invented yet, except for "Survivor" and maybe "Big Brother". One guy named Jake watched the tape seven days ago, and he's desperately trying to get his girlfriend (?) to watch the tape, with just minutes to go before he somehow dies. Not cool, dude. Maybe she gets suspicious when he puts the tape on and leaves the room, or maybe he oversold how COOL it is to watch this scary tape that kills you. Either way, he comes back in the room, thinking he's beaten the system, only to find out that Emily "watched" it with her eyes closed. Yeah, maybe Emily's not the sharpest knife in the drawer - OR, maybe she's smarter than we think, because she doesn't die at the hand of the evil ghost-demon Samara, he does. Still, someone should probably explain to Emily how to watch a videotape.
They never made a sequel to this film where the ghost-demon upgraded to DVD or BluRays? Or since Samara died in the 1980's she doesn't understand that technology? Man, I think we skated on this one because nobody's watching VHS tapes any more, except for me. Thank God the evil ghost-demon who was thrown down a well doesn't understand how to get her movie on streaming platforms, but then again, from what I've seen, nobody really understands how that process works. Anyway I don't think she'd make any money doing that, because nobody seems to be making money from streaming any more, Samara would be better off getting a YouTube channel, but then she really would need to promote it to get the required number of views, they keep sort of moving that goalpost and making it more difficult. Welcome to the world of independent film distribution, evil ghost-demon!
Anyway, Rachel and her son Aidan have moved from the Seattle area to a small town in Oregon, and Rachel's working for a local newspaper with a nice-guy editor, Max, who's a potential love interest for her, if all goes well and he doesn't get scared to death by an evil ghost-demon. But come on, what are the odds of THAT happening? Rachel hears about the new trend in Western Oregon, trying to get your girlfriend to watch a VHS tape that kills you, and she breaks into the crime scene to burn the videotape, so there you go, problem solved, movie over. But that also alerted Samara to Rachel's location, and the evil ghost-demon decides that inside Rachel's son Aidan would be a pretty cool place to hang out, so she enters him inside a gender-neutral restroom at the county fair.
A bunch of deer try to attack their car on the way home, and honestly it's a bit unclear if the deer are being controlled by the demon, or if they can sense the demon and are trying to destroy it. I suppose if a bunch of deer wreck your car it doesn't matter much what their motive is. But Aidan's body temperature starts to drop and bruises develop on his arms, and everyone in the hospital is convinced that Rachel is an abusive mother, because people don't just get instant hypothermia, not even in northern Oregon. But since he's in the hospital this gives Rachel more time to investigate Samara's back-story even further - unlike in the previous film, where she just left her kid home alone with no supervision for long stretches of time.
Rachel tracks down Samara's mother, who is somehow still alive despite giving birth in the 1950's (?) and tracks her down in a psychiatric hospital, which is where she's been since she tried to drown her own baby because the baby told her to. Meanwhile, Samara/Aidan kills his doctor in the hospital and then just walks out and goes back to Max's house. Rachel figures out that Aidan is possessed because he calls her "Mommy", and before he was calling her by her first name. Yeah, I tried that with my mother once when I was a kid and got in trouble for it.
Apparently the only way to get Samara out of her son is to put sleeping pills in his jelly sandwiches, and then drown him in the bathtub, because Samara still has a fear of being drowned, even though she's dead. Seems a bit weird because she can't drown AGAIN, but whatever. But this is just going to give mothers out there bad ideas, the movie's basically saying any time your ten-year-old is acting weird, just drown him in the bathtub, that'll fix it. Then it's just a simple matter of allowing herself to be pulled into the VHS world, climb out of a well before the super-fast ghost-demon, and close the lid on the well. What could be easier? Now just get your soul back into your body and try to enjoy life, if you can.
This franchise was WAY over-hyped, considering how much didn't happen in these two movies. They sure tried to do a lot with a little, and the footage that kills you really just looked like a bad student film. Anyway, that's another franchise crossed off the list, and I never have to circle back to this one, let's hope. This is what you get when the film's director and lead actress are contractually obligated to keep working on a sequel but just don't really want to be there.
Also starring David Dorfman (also carrying over from "The Ring"), Simon Baker (last seen in "The Killer Inside Me"), Kelly Stables (last heard in "Dolittle"), Sissy Spacek (last seen in "Being Mary Tyler Moore"), Mary Elizabeth Winstead (last seen in "Kate"), Elizabeth Perkins (last seen in "Moonlight and Valentino"), Gary Cole (last seen in "Blockers"), Ryan Merriman (last seen in "42"), Emily VanCamp (last seen in "Captain America: Civil War"), Kelly Overton, James Lesure (last seen in "Fire with Fire"), Chane't Johnson, Cooper Thornton (last seen in "Walk of Shame"), Marilyn McIntyre (last seen in "Very Bad Things"), Jesse Burch (last seen in "The Last Word"), Michael Chieffo (last seen in "Battle of the Sexes"), Steve Petranca, Michael Dempsey, Kirk B.R. Woller (last seen in "After the Sunset"), Jeffrey Hutchinson (last seen in "Changeling"), Mary Joy (last seen in "The Rundown"), Michelle Anne Johnson, Teri Bibb, Jill Farley, Aleksa Palladino (last seen in "The Irishman"), Victor McCay (last seen in "The Front Runner"), Brendan Tomlinson, Phyllis Lyons (last seen in "The Bridges of Madison County"), Amy Haffner, Jonathan Coburn, Sherilyn Lawson (last seen in "Feast of Love") with archive footage of Daveigh Chase (also carrying over from "The Ring"), Shannon Cochran (ditto)
RATING: 3 out of 10 discounted VHS tapes at the county fair
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