The Ring Two

Six months after the events of the first film and immediately following the events of the short film Rings, Samara Morgan’s cursed videotape has been circulating through teenagers in Astoria, Oregon. Jake Pierce is on his seventh day as per the tape's rules, and asks his friend Emily to watch the tape. He briefly steps into his kitchen while Emily supposedly watches the tape. Jake receives a phone call and initially thinks it is Samara but 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 son, Aidan, have moved to Astoria from Seattle after sending the tape off into the ether. 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 they are attacked by multiple wild deer on the way, wrecking the car. After the deer, Rachel returns home with Aiden and worries about his health. It was during this time that she sees Samara and Rachel realizes Aidan may be possessed by Samara.

Deciding to not be alone in their home, they rush out to the paper, surprising her co-workers including Max. Rachel then asks for his help, claiming to have lost power, so Max takes them in. While Rachel is attempting to give Aidan a bath, he develops an irrational fear of water. 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. Whilst Aiden is sleeping, he telepathically sends Rachel a vision from Samara consisting of many different images. Rachel is left with many questions about Samara's origins.

Based on Aidan's bruises and his health, CPS is called. Psychiatrist Emma Temple shows up and concludes that Rachel is abusing her son. Rachel doesn't want to talk, but Dr. Temple reveals her knowledge of Rachel's bout with postpartum depression. Thinking that Rachel was the one harming Aidan, Emma bans Rachel from seeing her son until the two women can speak about it in depth.

Looking for answers, Rachel tries to find out who Samara's birth parents were from an adoption agency. Unfortunately this just directs her back to the Morgans. Rachel returns to the Morgan ranch on Moesko Island. She is all set to break in when she learns that a real estate agent is holding an open house and she arrives early. The realtor lies about what happened to the Morgan family, but reveals that any furniture they left behind was sent down to the basement. She heads down there and finds the mirror from the tape, many deer antlers, Samara's old toy merry-go-round and a suitcase with a small flower on it. Inside the case is evidence of Samara's biological mother.

While Rachel looks for answers, Samara takes control of Aidan's body, waking him up from sleep. The nurses call Dr. Temple in to speak with him and while they talk, Samara telepathically forces Dr. Temple to commit suicide.

Rachel heads to a church and learns that Samara's biological mother was named Evelyn, who showed up with no father in sight. It is also recorded that she tried to drown Samara as an infant, and was subsequently committed to a psychiatric hospital. When Rachel goes to visit, Evelyn is expecting her, and she is allowed immediately entry to the facility. Evelyn advises her cryptically that: "dreams are safe," that "my baby told me to kill her", and that Rachel "let the dead get in." As Rachel leaves, she asks what to do Evelyn replies: "listen to my baby."

Unbeknownst to Rachel, Aidan has left the hospital and returned to Max's house. Max arrives and, suspecting foul play, tries to secretly take photos of Aidan. When Rachel returns, an affectionate Aidan greets her, his behaviour seeming out-of-character. She steps out, and finds Max's corpse in his pickup truck. When Rachel falls asleep she dreams of Aidan, who tells her that she will have to exorcise Samara. When she wakes up, Rachel drugs Samara/Aidan with sleeping pills and puts their body in the bath, temporarily drowning Aidan in order to exorcise her. Samara leaves Aidan's body, but appears in the television. Rachel allows herself to be dragged into Samara's monochromatic world, while Aidan pleads with her not to go.

Finding herself in the bottom of the well Samara died in, Rachel discovers the lid is partially open. Repeating the line "it's always open," Rachel scales the well's walls, pursued by Samara, who contorts her body to follow her. Rachel escapes by climbing out and pushing the lid shut on Samara as she cries "Mommy." Rachel locks her out of her and Aidan's lives. As she wanders through the woods and begins to hear Aidan's voice. Eventually she comes to the cliff where Samara's adoptive mother Anna committed suicide. Rachel cries before closing her eyes, still hearing her son's voice. She looks down into the water, then closes her eyes and jumps. In this way, she is able to return to the real world and reunite with Aidan believing that their ordeal is finally over.

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a 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 cliches, and not even Hideo Nakata, the director of the movies from which this one is based, can save the movie from a dull screenplay full of absurdities."[2] Metacritic, which assigns a weighted average score, gave the film a 44 out of 100 based on 37 reviews from critics.[3] Roger Ebert, however, considered it better than the first film, giving it 2½ stars and writing "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."[4]

Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "C+" on an A+ to F scale.[5]

In the Unrated Edition DVD release, a few extra scenes were included that were not in the theatrical release. These scenes included 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 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). A scene in the theatrical cut in which Aidan first encounters a deer while wandering the local fair (prior to the deer attack) has also been removed from this version. Also, some musical cues were changed such as when Samara leaps out of the well in the opening scene. The opening scene was also longer. 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.

• The Ring Two at IMDb
• The Ring Two at AllMovie
• The Ring Two at Box Office Mojo
• The Ring Two at Rotten Tomatoes