The Ring Two

The Ring Two is a 2005 American supernatural horror film and sequel to the 2002 film The Ring, which was a remake of the 1998 Japanese film Ring. Hideo Nakata, director of the original Ring, directed this film in place of Gore Verbinski. Noam Murro was attached before Nakata, but left due to creative differences. Naomi Watts, David Dorfman and Daveigh Chase reprised their roles with Simon Baker, Elizabeth Perkins and Sissy Spacek joining the cast. This film also marks the debut of Mary Elizabeth Winstead.

The film was shot in Astoria, Oregon, and Los Angeles, California. Originally intended to be released on November 10, 2004, The Ring Two was released theatrically on March 18, 2005. Although it was met with a generally negative critical reception, it opened in the United States with a strong $35 million in its first weekend, more than doubling the opening weekend of The Ring. Its final $76 million domestic gross was less than the original's $129 million, but it took $87 million internationally, for a total gross of $164 million.

It is the second installment of the American Ring series, and was followed by Rings (2017).

Plot
Six months after the first film and the short film Rings, Samara Morgan's cursed videotape has been circulating through Astoria, Oregon. Jake Pierce is on his seventh day after watching the cursed videotape. Desperate, he asks his friend Emily to watch it. While Emily supposedly watches the tape, he briefly steps into his kitchen. Jake receives a phone call and is relieved to realize it is only his friend, with whom he had planned to trick Emily into watching the tape. Suddenly, Jake notices dark liquid pouring from under the kitchen door and runs outside to the living room, only to discover Emily closed her eyes while watching the tape. Jake is then promptly murdered by Samara.

Rachel Keller and her 9-year-old son, Aidan, have moved to Astoria from Seattle. Rachel works at The Daily Astorian for editor Max Rourke. Rachel learns of Jake's death, inspecting his body, only for Samara to appear, declaring that she has been looking for her. Rachel breaks into Jake's house, obtains the videotape, and burns it. Aidan experiences a nightmare where Samara drags him into a television. He soon starts developing hypothermia and bruises on his arms. At a county fair, Aidan wanders into a restroom and takes photographs of his reflection, where Samara appears. Rachel takes him home but wild deer attack them on the way. Rachel realizes Samara may possess Aidan.

Max takes them in. While Rachel attempts to bathe Aidan, he develops aquaphobia. Samara causes the water to recede from the bath, replacing Aidan with herself, and terrorizing Rachel so that she tries to drown Samara. Max enters, seeing her drowning Aidan instead, and forces her to take her son to the hospital. Based on Aidan's bruises, psychiatrist Emma Temple suspects child abuse on the part of Rachel, who admits having postpartum depression, and she sends Rachel away. Looking for answers, Rachel returns to Moesko Island, finding evidence of Samara's biological mother Evelyn, who tried to drown her as an infant. Rachel visits Evelyn in a psychiatric hospital, who advises her to "listen to her baby".

In the hospital, Aidan, possessed by Samara, telepathically forces Dr. Temple to commit suicide and then returns to Max's house. Max arrives, suspects foul play, and tries to take photos of Aidan secretly. Rachel arrives, discovering an affectionate Aidan waiting for her, but acting suspiciously out of character. She steps outside, finding Max's corpse in his truck. Rachel falls asleep, dreaming of Aidan, who tells her she must exorcise Samara. Upon awakening, Rachel drugs Samara with sleeping pills and places her in the bath to temporarily drown Aidan to exorcise her.

Samara is removed but appears on the television. Rachel allows herself to be dragged into Samara's monochromatic world. Finding herself in the bottom of the well Samara died in, Rachel discovers the lid is partially open. She scales the well's walls, pursued by Samara, but escapes by climbing out and pushing the lid shut on Samara, locking her out of her and Aidan's lives. Wandering through the woods, she comes to the cliff where Samara's adoptive mother Anna committed suicide. Hearing Aidan's voice, Rachel falls off the cliff and into the water, returning to the real world and reuniting with Aidan.

Critical reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 20% based on 189 reviews, with an average rating of 4.44/10. The site's critical consensus states: "Ring Two serves up horror clichés, and not even Hideo Nakata, the director of the film from which this one is based, can save Ring Two from a dull screenplay full of absurdities". Metacritic assigned the film a weighted average score of 44 out of 100 based on 37 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".

Roger Ebert considered it better than the first film, giving it 2½ stars: "The charm of The Ring Two, while limited, is real enough; it is based on the film's ability to make absolutely no sense, while nevertheless generating a real enough feeling of tension a good deal of the time".

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.

Home media
In the unrated edition DVD release, a few extra scenes were included that were not in the theatrical release. These scenes include conversations with Rachel's new neighbor (and neighborhood gossip), numerous additions in which Max shows a romantic interest in Rachel, more scenes with Samara prior to her possession of Aidan (including one in which she is shown to enter him in the restroom at the local fair), and an extended opening scene. However, the scene in the theatrical cut in which Aidan first encounters a deer while wandering the local fair (prior to the deer attack) has been removed from this version. The scene when the power went out was changed with a scene of the lights in Aidan's room going on and off, as well as the oven downstairs catching fire. Also, some musical cues were changed such as when Samara leaps out of the well in the opening scene.

The short film Rings (2005) (which was also included on a special edition of The Ring released just before The Ring Two arrived in theaters) was also included on the unrated DVD. The film officially debuted on Blu-ray on October 26, 2012, in Japan, containing all the extras from the DVD and including the Unrated Cut. The film was released on Blu-ray and 4K UHD in the United States for the first time on March 19, 2024 by Scream Factory as part of The Ring Collection, containing both its theatrical and unrated cuts.