***SOME BIG SPOILERS - so read with extreme care (or with extreme gratitude that I saved you 2 hours of your life that you'll be able to better use in benefit of your family, your community or place of worship).***<br /><br />"THE RING TWO" is is truly one of the laziest horror films of this or any year. It shamefully exists only for the sake of milking another $10 out of the poor saps who enjoyed (or understood) the first film.<br /><br />I had no expectations for this movie, but say what you will about the first film - it did maintain a creepy tone through most of its running time, and its goofy psychobabble was at least palatable in the whatever-it-takes-to make-this-work mode. The sequel unfortunately, has no desire to flesh it's bare-bones plot out or explain anything that happens outside of it's narrow focus of two main characters. <br /><br />Is this the best sequel idea the screenwriter could come up with? Naomi Watts again stars as Rachel, the lone survivor of an evil videotape who, by merely watching what's on that tape, kills its viewer. Part Two actually dispatches that gimmick with 20 minutes of its opening (!), and instead cobbles together what amounts to a backstory piece that picks up with Rachel and son Aidan's move from Seattle to picturesque Astoria, Oregon to start a new life. Soon though, the undead spirit from the first film reappears to lie claim to Rachel's son through a series of not-entirely-understandable "shock" sequences that lead to a cyclical revelation of horror repeating itself.<br /><br />Logic seemingly goes out the window as soon as the Dreamworks logo appears on screen. With "The Ring's" evil specters again unleashed, wouldn't any of the locals in the small town - that one character describes its most newsworthy events as "...a school board meeting, a car accident or a cat up a tree..." - be all a-twitter? Considering that the body count increases as the film progresses in highly public places without so much as a police investigation, front page headline or a neighborhood revolt is the kind of lame bedrock this film is built on. Watching this, I saw huge dollops of "Poltergeist 2: The Other Side" in this with its journeys into the spirit world - and a sequel to "Poltergeist" isn't exactly a hotbed of movie concepts to begin with. If you were at the screenplay-regurgitation factory, why not at least crib a good scary premise from a good film, say like "Videodrome" or something and build on it? Even "Halloween 3" could have given this film's screenplay a few more scary beats than it has. <br /><br />Characters do audience-insulting, idiotic things as crutches to ratchet up some tension - such as leaving a lethargic child alone in a tub AND THEN LEAVING THE HOUSE (!) or taking plenty of time to stop and watch a herd of deer attacking you in your car... over and over! Instead of capitalizing on the original's spooky teaser premise of the possibility of a worldwide pandemic of "Ring" video viewing - as well as that film's not-so-subtle commentary of the unknown evils that flow into your living room through consumer products - the sequel goes off in borderline-tasteless takes on the serious malady of post-partum depression and child abuse. Some fun. <br /><br />This movie has no shame whatsoever. It contains absolutely NO scares, and in fact goes out of its way to throw in every cheap "jump" in the book just to make it "feel" like it's a horror film. There's the surprise-scare-from-behind, the it's-only-a-dream, the it's-not-dead, the jump-up-corpse... you know, every hackneyed trick in the book. The special makeup work provided by effects master Rick Baker gets two or three-second PG-13 showcases that don't titillate, but confuse. In a fright movie like this, you do have the license to linger a little longer on the macabre, right? Not in this movie - the scares are safe enough to guarantee that your little sister and her friends can see this on Saturday night and not have to sneak in from "Ice Princess" next door.<br /><br />"THE RING TWO" is all over the map acting-wise. Watts seems to be catatonic through most of the film, with a range that goes from confused to pretend-scared, while her overly-pancaked son Aidan played by young David Dorfman seems both possessed and cardboard all in the same go. The film tries to "class" itself up by throwing in cameos by legitimately fine actors like Sissy Spacek, Elizabeth Perkins and Gary Cole for one or two scenes that are as distracting as they are embarrassing to watch. Did these actors really need to be in this film? What was the director's motivation for hiring such good actors for such insignificant parts? I hope the three got paid well for the one day each put in and maybe did something fun with the cash.<br /><br />Yes, it's only a movie, but the resulting "product" does the unconscionable: it rips it's audience off and sends them out the other side poorer and less entertained - suckered in by the goodwill earned from the first film. It also manages to give sequels an even worse name than they already have. Burn its audience with a few more of these and maybe Hollywood will be up for making some original, challenging and thoughtful horror films again.