Ring 2

Ring 2 takes off where Ring ended. The hunt for the secret of the lethal video film continues and it is discovered that not only does the film kill, it also makes those closely related to the dead mute. Moreover, the film also seems to have a special ability to communicate with its viewers. Neither Ring nor Ring 2 tries to scare its audience by using a subjective camera, fast cuts or shocking close-ups. The film camera observes calmly as if not to be compromised by its lethal cousin the video camera. Instead, this matter-of-factly, almost distancing, camera turns our interest towards the mystery with the lethal video film. The film as a collective memory is here bestowed with another attraction, the power to control what we can remember and what we can say about these memories. But this risks making the lethal video film to yet another (ridiculous) metaphor for the power of the media. And we hardly need more of those metaphors. We are already choking on all the new media prophets who give us loads of them, each one more pointless than the other. Ring and Ring 2 give us something else, a horrifying mirror of the film. What scares us isn't what we see, but the seeing itself. The fact that our viewing can kill and at the same time expose us in front of death is worse than anything we can see. That's why there is no need for other visual effects than the film- and video-images we are used to. If we accept this set up, the playing with the horror genre conventions we see in both Ring and Ring 2 works without any irony. But those who want to see the film as a dissociate, ironic twist on genre conventions will have problems understanding it. Maybe even problems surviving it.