User reviews

In this sequel to Ringu (1998), Mai Takano is trying to learn more about the death of her boyfriend, Ryuji. She soon hears stories about a videotape haunted by the spirit of a girl named Sadako, who died many years earlier. Supposedly, anyone watching the tape will die of fright exactly one week later. After some investigating, she learns that Ryuji's son, Youichi, is developing the same psychic powers that Sadako had when she was alive. Mai must now find some way to keep Yuuichi and herself from becoming Sadako's next victims Ringu was the first horror movie I brought on video,, I sat really close to TV and Ringu the scared the hell out me, so bad then i had to look for sequel.

It was not that good as Ringu at all, it didn't have the same feel to It.

There were some good creepy moments here and there however that was is about it, those scenes were not scary.

This movie did have some really dull moment, which did bore me.

The acting was not great but still good from most of the cast.

Okay sequel but could of been much better., I going this movie a 5 out of 10.

I watched Ringu only a few days ago and pretty much got it. With this the result was different. Mai has such a small role in the original that I almost had no idea who she was. Also, I found that this film expected you to understand stuff without even mentioning it at all, such as the fact that Sadako had manifested herself in Yoichi - it was assumed that we got it. I did get it, of course, but a hint of explanation would have been nice.

As with my previous review of the original, I can honestly say that I didn't find this instalment particularly scary. More like an over-complicated episode of The X Files. That's another trait of Japanese cinema that gets me sometimes - a film would seem OK to start, fairly straightforward, easy to get, but towards the end of the movie it gets unnecessarily complicated. Luckily there wasn't too much of that here, but there was still a bit of it. If I were to continue that rant a little,I would voice my annoyance at the barrage of unfinished important sentences that characters tend to speak. OK, so maybe we should be able to finish them ourselves, but sometimes it's just too obscure. For example, sentences along the lines of "That mean's he's...", or "Could he be...". No conclusion to the sentence. Nothing. Grrr! Anyway, rant over, overall I thought this was watchable, though not as good or coherent as the original. Despite the ranting, I still love Japanese cinema (what little experience I have of it).

I'm away to watch Ringu 0. Let's see how well it does.

This movie takes place a week after the events of `Ring', making the first movie pretty which a pre-requisite for viewing (director Nakata fortunately doesn't feel the need to waste too much time on annoying exposition). We now look at those who were in contact with characters from the first movie and how they're getting on. This calls for the reprisal of most of the cast, including the lead Reiko. This time Reiko fears that her son, whom she saved in the previous flick, may be under the influence of the evil of Sadako. Guess what? She's out to stop her!

There's less tension evident in `Ring 2' than the previous, less a sense of worry and desperation. Part of this is due to the shifting of character's prominence. Another element is because this movie takes a somewhat more analytical approach to the events of the first – the police are involved, scientists are trying to understand the phenomena. While this makes sense from a realism angle, it does somewhat detract from the underlying menace of Sadoka.

Structurally the movie takes the same idea as the previous – a slow build up to a climatic event, interspersed with some moments of terror. Some of this terror now comes from a child – playing on innocence – and the child in question, Yoichi, is quite capable of being frightening in a blank-faced way. However he's just not as capable as having the greater, unknown, terror the previous movie produced – like any sequel in the genre there's the feeling of the killer slashing their way through each flick.

Nakata is fairly competent with what he has. The lighting is often muted, the camera work focused (without being intense), his actors giving grand performances… but somehow the second time it doesn't work out quite as well. This, coupled with a disappointing ending, left me somewhat disappointed. There's some good moments in it – particularly with the television images – but overall it fails to quite grab you. Still a far more intelligent fare than the gore-drenched horror that most adhere to in this genre, and you could do a lot lot worse. 6/10.

After watching the very good original on TV a couple months ago and seeing that sequel was on TV last weekend I thought it might be like most sequels and wouldn't live up to the original, but I was wrong.

Hideo Nakata's sequel Ringu 2 is a stylish film with an excellent blend of thrills and chills, without rehashing any ideas that were in the first film. It's filled with superb imagery, good special effects, effective make-up and lots of atmosphere that is impressively imposing.

It lacks the pace of the original (in the case of the 7 days before you die) but for me I found the story more intriguing, gripping and unpredictable. This time around the haunting idea of the cursed videotape/Sakado is investigated in far more detail and it heads into different territory. I thought it was much more darker, especially the ending. With the feel of hope at the end of the first one fading away in the second film.

It's definitely one of the best recent horror sequels I've seen, but then again it doesn't feel like a sequel as it seems to fit in like it was the second half of the original's story.

I enjoyed this movie more than that of the original, but definitely hire them both out and watch them together.

4/5

I enjoyed the first ring film from Japan, it was eerie and sufficiently creepy. Then I watched Rasen, and it had a cool moment here and there, but was a strange and disappointing sequel. Now I have watched this one and it is bland and boring...sadly the American sequel was better and I usually prefer the Japanese version of films. I now know that Rasen is the official sequel and actually related to the book while this one was made because that film was received so poorly, so everything you saw in Rasen forget about it. Though strangely this film answers the question of why we went from little girl to adult creepy woman. In the end, though, I think I would have preferred never to have seen either sequel as both really just ruin what was established in the first film.

The story is somewhat similar to Rasen as we are once again following Mai. People are still trying to do stories about the video tape and the mother and son from the original are on the run. Seriously, there really is not a whole lot of story here. Just people making discoveries and me being bored to tears. Not even a cool autopsy scene to at least satisfy the part of me that likes gore. For the most part it is little boy has key and lots of water.

The American version was not a favorite of mine either, but it played out better than this one. This one just seemed to have no focus, we go form this person and that person. We keep having to look at stuff and flashbacks it just feels messy. There are only a couple of things in this one that carried over to the American version and that is the fact the boy is the focal point, water is pivotal and the strange chase scene up the well.

So no, I did not like this film much at all. Rasen and this film keep trying to explain everything in scientific terms rather than it just being an evil spirit. I also have Ringu 0, but after watching these other two sequels I am not sure how up to the task I will be at watching a prequel.

This film was a pretty good watch. I had a little trouble reading the subtitles in the copy I had. You would think that they would not use white subtitles when almost everyone in the film wears white. Anyway the film has some pretty chilling moments but not as many as the first one. For a horror film this has got to be one of the best sequals I have seen. They do not lose the thought throughout the story and keep with the original plot line. I would like to own this movie and also am kind of anticipating the Americanized version releasing next year.

Yes, skip this and check "Ring O: Birthday" instead, because that film have the same quality as "Ringu".This film is nothing but a confusing package. There's no scare or twisted plot. Just a complicated and dull story line. No need to watch though, but if you want to complete the series you may go for it!

4/10

Never judge a horror movie until the sun has risen afterwards. I saw "Ring" and "Ring 2" in one night, and I was impressed (not to mention suitably chilled) by both, even if the second WAS a bit of an incoherent mess. A night's sleep and a morning stroll to the shops afterwards, the full truth was obvious: the original "Ring" is a modern classic, perhaps even a masterpiece, terrifying and coherent and beautifully formed; the second is an unexciting rip-off of no particular merit. Whatever virtues it has it borrows from the first. It's not so much that it makes no sense unless you've seen "Ring" first - it makes no sense anyway - rather, the scary things are only scary the second time round because they were scary the first; remove the experience of watching the original "Ring" and there's nothing left.

Part of the problem which Hideo Nakata faced was that this kind of stuff works best, and often only works at all, when the audience is placed in exactly the same position as the protagonists. We start "Ring" in ignorance. Presently we learn that somewhere out there is a fatal videotape; from the moment you finish watching it, you have a week left to live. The heroine watches the tape. (As she watches it, we watch it, too.) She now has a week to live, and, without a single day being spared, we live through that week as she struggles to avoid her fate, or at the very least to understand more of it, by finding out all she can about the origin of the tape. As she learns, we learn. Only at the very end, after she has mysteriously survived and her husband has mysteriously died, is she given the final piece of information (those who haven't seen "Ring" shouldn't be reading this in the first place): that someone who has seen the tape CAN cheat death, but only by making a copy of the tape and persuading someone else to watch it. No better ending could have been devised. Dramatically and emotionally apt, it also explains a few things: why anyone could be so cruel as to make her son to watch the tape, and why the quality of the tape is so horribly degraded (it's not JUST because it's creepier that way, or because people watching the tape feel compelled to huddle up close to the televsion screen in order to see it clearly).

BUT... now that we know that people who have seen the tape have an easy escape clause, we won't be able to feel their fear so keenly ever again. This doesn't mean that the first "Ring" won't have the same effect on us if we watch it a second time; I suspect it will, since it's always possible to return to the initial position of ignorance. But we can't adopt that position at the start of the SECOND movie. How, then, is Nakata going to scare us?

Partly by direct borrowing: We remember how terrifying the videotape footage is, so we jump when it makes a reappearance; we know how terrifying Sadako is, with her hair completely covering her face and her ungainly, bestial, unstoppable gait - in fact, she's terrifying IN HERSELF, in whatever context she appears, although not one of her scenes here can begin to compare with the one in the original "Ring" in which she crawls out of the television set - so we jump whenever we see HER. Partly Nakata simply keeps the original film's atmosphere intact, so that we know it takes place in the same world, which is frightening enough. But his main way of keeping things going is to throw in whatever he can think of. In addition to the minimal paraphernalia of the first film, we have a SECOND video ghost, a possibly possessed child, telekinesis, spirit photography, hallucinations, dimension doors ... in short, randomly chosen, tried-and-true horror hand-me-downs which reek of desperation. One gets the impression that Nakata would have thrown in vampires, too, if he'd thought that they'd help.

The sad thing is that despite its weakness and triviality the film still runs rings (so to speak) around its contemporary Western counterparts, the worn-to-death cliché of the thirty-seventh "Nightmare on Elm Street" and the pathetically inept attempted innovation of "The Blair Witch Project".

Hmmm...I really seem to be missing on something here. Practically all my fellow IMDb-users are full of praise for this sequel to Ringu, but I don't second these opinion. It really thought it was a dreadful movie and a very unpleasant cinema experience. How much I'd like to support the Japanese horror-business and encourage people to discover it, I just don't think this is a good representation for it. Personally, I think there's ONE big disease in the film industry: the "easy-money" concept! Small and simple films become a huge and unexpected success and that encourages the producers to shoot a sequel as soon as possible, in order to make even more money. This disease seems to have contaminated Japan as well now, since I really think Ringu 2 suffers from it.

Absolutely NOTHING happens in the first 30 minutes of this film!! Than we're served a full quarter of suspense, exciting cinema and good character development. After that, it's downhill again till the end-credits role. A real shame actually, because those short 15 minutes of highlights really proved that there still was a lot of potential to continue the original story of Ringu. The plot involves the mind and will of the little boy from Ringu - Yoichi - taken over by the evil little girl Sadako. To itself, not a bad starting point but poorly executed. You're most likely to read a lot of comments that state Ringu2 is scary and full of suspense. Well, I think some people confuse suspense with complexity. Ringu 2 is nowhere near scary and I think slow and everlasting are more appropriate words. If you're interested in seeing a really scary Japanese movie, I suggest you check out "Audition" by Takashi Miike or even "Dark Water" by the same director who directed this film. Ringu 2 can easily be skipped

Ringu 2 for me has to be one of the best sequels made. It has all the feel of Ring and also refers to back to the original movie. The scene at the hospital with the kid from the original who is too frightened to see a TV was a brilliant piece of look back setting.

It is definately a movie that makes one think that Ringu & Ringu 2 were one whole movie split into two separate ones. There is no indication of a budget increase, or special effects to impress existing fans, and definately holds the Ringu style strong.

With clever use of the original cast and elimination of them when needed and the introduction of newer characters makes this film seem as though you have already seen it but are reminded, that you have not.

Yes it is scary, yes it delves more into the mind of Sadako and Yoichi in brilliant technique and yes it will continue your nightmares. I think that something very clever has gone on with the directors in how they want to leave the audience thinking. The original movie left the audience thinking about something coming out of their TV. Then, in the second, tries to create a fear of TV all together and combined with what we see in the original and now in the sequel, does a bloody good job.

I am personally fearful of an "off" TV in a dark room alone. I know nothing is gonna happen, or that Sadako is not real. However, because of the shear impact that this movie has had on me my imagination can create a fear so bad that I must sleep with the TV on.

The first film was a brilliant chilling masterpiece, and this is a good little follow up considering that sequels to classics are a bad idea usually. However as the film progresses it gets gradually worse and then you realise it is just another example of bad sequels to classics. There are, however, some chilling scenes e.g, the scene where the mirror on the wall reflects Sadako's mother combing her hair and that eerie tone kicks in. Then there's the scenes that just go too far with the supernatural ideas and result in being near fantasy. The end is by far too much of a muddle and the whole idea of water being transferred through the mind is too far-fetched. However, despite what i've just said, I urge you to watch this instead of the remake which is ten times worse!

As we examine the aspects of the lethal videotape in this very good sequel, it is admittedly not as frightening as the first movie.

Hideo Nakata resumes his taut direction, and a few shocks abound. Nice to see Nanako Matsushima return as Reiko even if the main star of this story is Miki Nakatani's character Mai Takano, who had a brief appearance in the first film.

Ring 2 does retain many of the atmospheric and subdued sounds of the first film, but, unlike Ring, you can watch this sequel without the lights on. However, the conclusion to the film is extremely ominous.

Ring 2 is not a horror movie in the true sense of the word, and is certainly not as shocking as its theatrical trailer suggests, but it continues the story admirably, and all the actors involved put in cherished performances. I personally enjoyed it.

.... So I don`t know if this is a factor of not being able to make head nor tail of this sequel . To my mind it plays out entirely different from what I was expecting , where the original movie ended led me to believe this sequel would involve the most dangerous pyramid scheme in human history - and unless you`ve seen RINGU that last sentence will make no sense - but here we have something that threatens to come close to the Brian DePalma films CARRIE and THE FURY and I bet that Gore Verbinski and Ehren Kruger will milk that aspect for all it`s worth in the Hollywood remake.

It`s good in places with a scene involving aura photography being very chilling especially with creepy music being played over the soundtrack and the ending does answer the question I had about the ending of the Hollywood version of THE RING , but this is still an inferior reworking of the original that left me confused with scenes like the bit in the swimming pool , just what was all that about ?

Some people on this page are pleading not to see a RINGU 3 produced . I couldn`t agree more . I give RINGU 2 a mere 4 out of 10

Ring didn't really need a sequel but since it was a massively popular horror movie, it got one anyway (and several others after this). This one picks up immediately after the conclusion of events in the first movie and has characters investigating further the mysteries of Sadako. Aside from being unnecessary, I guess one of the main issues is that the more you explain about Sadako, the less scary she becomes - the unknown element works in the first movie's favour, allowing us to fill in the gaps. Nevertheless, this is still quite decent, with some very effective sequences; chief amongst them being a scene where the protagonist has a dream that replays events from the weird videotape showing Sadako and her mother by the moving mirror. It's a super creepy sequence and along with several other nicely sinister moments, ensures that Ring 2 is worth watching.

Let me start by saying if you didn't see the first film dont go anywhere near this one because you need to know what happened in the first movie to get anywhere near what this film is about and even then this sequal could still confuse the hell out of you instead scare the hell out of you. What they failed to realise is that in the first film the simplicity of the story was was enough to make it scary.In this it tries to complicate things and gets away from the scary aspect of the first which is , the watching of the video,then the phone call,then the waiting a week for the death to happen. There are a couple of scary moments but not enough for this to be called a good horror. Only for true lovers of the first movie. 5 out of 10.

Just recently, I was the 376th person on the IMDb to review the 1998 Japanese horror classic "Ringu"; a day later, and I am now #78 to review the sequel to that film, "Ringu 2" (1999). This disparity in numbers surprises me, as it's hard for me to believe that any viewer who saw the original film would not want to know more about Sadako, the lank-haired ghost girl who kills via videotape. However, although we DO learn more about this fascinating character in "Ringu 2," and get some plot points cleared up, this sequel proved something of an anticlimax for me, and raised more questions than it explained. The original "Ringu" is a truly scary film, with great, ominous atmosphere and at least one classic horror sequence (that TV crawl-through). The sequel picks up precisely where the original left off, but is somehow not as creepy, centering on one of the minor characters of the original (the very pretty Miki Nakatani) and on police and scientific investigations into the Sadako phenomenon. The movie indulges in strangeness for the sake of strangeness, logic be damned, with the Sadako curse now affecting even those who haven't "gone to the videotape," and features psychic manifestations and assorted spectral mishegas thicker than a bowl of soba noodles. It's a case of atmosphere over coherent content, but man, what atmosphere! Still, I dare anyone to explain those final 15 minutes to me, as we go back into that darn well. The movie is a fascinating one, although it sure does leave one scratching the ol' noggin. Guess we'll have to proceed on to "Ringu 0" for some additional explication...

'Ringu 2' is slow boring, not a bit horrific and has some totally inept cinematography within. Witness the scene near the end when some is climbing out of a well using a rope. In alternate scenes you can see the rope, then there is no rope, then the rope is back again. Truly a film to forget.

Even though Sadako had been around for a long time (there were Suzuki Koji's source books and two previous TV movies), it was the theatrical version of Ring that made her huge. So, of course, there has to be a sequel (which, oddly enough, wasn't based on the next book in Koji's series; different filmmakers had already adapted that as Spiral). It's a daunting task to make an effective sequel to one of the all-time creepiest movies, but the filmmakers pull it off. Unfortunately, a lot of stupidity gets in the way of the scares.

A lot of plot in this one. The movie opens a week after the first one ends. Reiko's dad has just died, and she and her son have gone into hiding. Mai, who found Ryuji's body at the end of Ring, is investigating her boss'/boyfriend's death. She thinks Reiko and her son hold the key to this mystery. So she teams with one of Reiko's co-workers (who's still working on the story of the cursed videotape) to try and track Reiko down. At this point, there's already enough plot for a movie, and I haven't even mentioned the return trip to Sadako's old home, the doctor who thinks he can get rid of Sadako, the burial of Sadako's physical body, the girl the co-worker betrays (and literally comes back to haunt him), and the weird, scary "exorcism of Sadako" finale. Plot, plot, plot.

Before I tear this movie a new one, let me say one thing: minute for minute, this one has more scares than the first one. In fact, the filmmakers have realized that Sadako has become so commonplace (a Sadako doppleganger appears in almost every Japanese horror movie made after the first Ring) that they need only show her trademark hair to invoke fear. And it works. But the massive, ridiculous plot nearly kills this movie. While it tries to explain the occurances of the first movie, it raises more questions than it answers (why does everyone suddenly have psychic ability?; why are people who haven't even seen the tape haunted by Sadako?; how does that girl see the tape if all the copies have been destroyed?) Still, with all of these potholes, the movie still works. It's also nice to see almost the entire cast of the first film reprise their roles (even the dead ones). An effective thriller, even though it doesn't make a whole lot of sense. Fans of the first one won't be disappointed.

Reiko and her son, returning from the first film, are in hiding after the unexplained deaths of both her father and her ex-husband, while the authorities continue to search for her and Sadako's curse continues to claim victims unfortunate enough to watch the ever-circulating cursed video. I loved the first Ring. It was the first film to ever truly scare me, it was weird, unsettling and atmospheric as hell. I waited a long time to see the sequel, and now that I have, quite frankly, I wish I hadn't. I like to start my reviews positive and thus I'll begin with what I found effective about the film. While there were no scenes that genuinely haunted me the way the fist film did, there are a number of effective moments to be found here, the most notable being the unsettling "tape erasing" and "mirror" scenes. There are a few genuinely unexpected plot twists as well, the most startling being the death of a very important character from the first film. The actors were all fine. Hideo Nakata's direction, as true of the original, is solid and the atmosphere he creates is strong and often creepy. This, I hate to say, it where the positive aspects end. As with many other J-horrors (Ju-On: The Grudge and Uzumaki being perfect examples), the film thinks it can forgo any type of narrative and substitute a plot with creepy images. Note to J-horror directors: THIS DOESN'T WORK! Without a story line that the audience can follow, or characters we give two scents (for the lack of a better word) about, one neither cares for nor is engrossed by what's going on on-screen. This is especially true of the last half-hour of the film, which is silly, lame and surprisingly cheesy, not to mention confusing as hell.

I really wanted to like this movie. I was excited about it before seeing it, but after it ended I was left thinking, "Jeez, what a lame movie". Shame.

3.5/10.