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For the events that led to this movie, see my synopsis to Ringu, otherwise this one will pretty much stay incomprehensible.

... after Ryuji's (Hiroyuki Sanada) death, his assistant/girlfriend Mai (Miki Nakatani) is determined to find out what really happened to him, & her first lead leads her to the TV-station Reiko Asakawa (Nanako Matsushima), incidentlys Ryuji's ex, has researched a story for with Ryuji's help. At the station though Mai learns that Reiko and her son Yoichi (Rikiya Okata) have been missing for 10 days now ... but Okazaki (Yurei Yanagi) agrees to help Mai follow up on some other leads, first of which leads them to Masami (Hitomi Sato), the girl who has found the dead Ryuji & has thus gone over the edge, now staying at Dr. Kawajiri's (Fumiyo Kohinata) sanitorium ... which is where Mai witnesses her somehow transmitting images of the infamous Sadako video onto the local tv-set.

& Kawajiri is quick to deliver an explanation for it: since (as it was earlier established) Sadako (Rie Inou) has survived down her well for 30 years, with her dead all her concentrated anger & bitterness have escaped the well & manifested themselves first on the videotape, & then apparently in Masami, &/or in other people - even Mai seems to have a bit of Sadako in her ...

Soon after that, Reiko & Yoichi are found out & the police brings them in for questioning. When that gets incomfy though, Yoichi - who seems to have more of Sadako in him than anyone else - starts using his ESP-powers on annoying police inspector Omuta (Kanjiro Ishimaru), & he & his mother make an escape ... in which Reiko is run over & killed by a truck.

From now on, Mai decides to take Yoichi under her wing (don't ask why) & the pair of them go to Sadako's home-island Oshima, where Mai recognizes more & more locations from the Sadako video. Eventually, doc Kawajiri also shows up & comes up with a very silly plan to exorcise Yoichi from the Sadako curse: He plans to turn the curse, borne out of bitterness, into pure energy, which he wants to be absorbed in a swimming pool (what ?). Furthermore he needs Mai as a catalyst.

As if you wouldn't have guessed it, the whole undertaking goes somewhat haywire, with the doc falling victim to his own experiment, & Mai & Yoichi are being sucked into a vortex where they are left hanging in something resembling the well Sadako has lived in for 30 years. Then Yoichi falls to the bottom of the well & seems to drown in its wateer, but Mai jumpos after him to save him, whereafter (supposedly as a reward for her pure heart) a rope is thrown down the well for the 2 of them to climb up, & the spirit of the dead Ryuichi shows up to suck the Sadako curse out of Yoichi ... & when Mai & Yoichi wake up again, they are lying on the edge of the pool of Kawajiri's experiment as the only 2 survivors ...

All's well that ends well ?

Not quite, because it seems since we saw him last Okazaki has had a run in with Sadako & has now been sent to the looney bin, showing the same symptoms as Masami ...

Despite having the occasional scene that is more scary than anything in its predecessor, this direct sequel to Ringu does fail to fulfill the high hopes put into it after its innovative predecessor. The problem with this movie is that it tries to bring the creepy & irrational goings-on of its predecessor into a rational context - & fails rather miserably since suddenly the movie finds itself steeping deep in exactly those horror clichés the first part successfully avoided, only made worse by a great number of pseudo-scientific explanations that only amount to new heights of genre absurdities.

That said, Ringu 2 in itself is not too bad a film, thanks to a creepy atmosphere & some genuinely scary scenes, it's just not a very good movie either, & not a worthy successor to Ringu.

The events of Rasen/Spiral, the other, earlier & totally misguided sequel of Ringu are not taken into account in this movie.

review © by Mike Haberfelner

 

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