IS IT STILL RELEVENT? RING: SPIRAL

Jason takes the next step in his deep dive into the what many call the premiere Japanese horror franchise with the second film, RING: SPIRAL

Released by the legendary Toho Studios, which is the home of Godzilla, and at the same time as the original movie, Ring: Spiral had every single advantage going for it to be a hugely successful film, yet it forgot one main ingredient to creating a horror film that people actually want to watch, and through my careful and deliberate observing of this film, I have managed to deduce what that most important aspect is.

The horror.

Taking place a week after the events laid out in the first film, we open with the autopsy of Ryuji Takayama, the last victim that we witness of Sadako in the first film, and an interview with his girlfriend, Mai, who was the person that found him after his death, which leads to an uncovering of the video once again, and a race against time, only without any real sense of urgency this time. Instead of every moment dripping with a sense of the impending doom that’s coming, this acts as a languid, existential meditation on life and loss, how grief affects us and how we rediscover the will to go on. Think of it like a lower budget Lost in Translation but so, so much worse.

Sadako is again our antagonist, but the water-logged, scary-haired girl that spider walked her way out of a television screen and into our hearts is gone, replaced by a much older version that just seems to want to bump the uglies with those that watch the tape, which is vastly confusing due to, as I said earlier, this being a week since we all witnessed that spider walk. What follows is mass confusion in this storyline, and despite being able to tell you everything that happened, I can’t actually tell you the why of any of it. This cultivates in Sadako being reborn through Mai, who she had either possessed or pretended to be only hours earlier. Which one isn’t any clearer than why she would do any of those things, and honestly, my head starts to hurt from lingering on it too long.

The final aspect that I want to talk about is how the after-effects of the video present themself. Instead of a curse, now the video afflicts the viewer with a virus, which presents with coughing and bruising of the neck, and ends with death by asphyxiation unlike the heart attacks in the previous entry. What’s even more frustrating is that we watch this happen to the people around our protagonist, despite him having watched the film which causes him exactly zero adverse side effects, until it’s revealed that those that have died read the journal of Reiko, our heroine from the first film, which apparently is now also a cursed item since it mentions the videotape.

Anyone else out there like what the fuck? Yeah, me too.

I get that these films were created simultaneously using two different directors and writers, but having the slightest amount of coordination between the two might have helped this film be slightly less of a failure, because if I’m being honest, even if it had been a differing take on the source material instead of a direct sequel, it still wouldn’t be any good, and would have failed even more miserably when compared to the far superior version that is Ringu. On top of the differences that I’ve already mentioned, it changes the ending of the original film in removing the frozen face of terror that marks the victims of Sadako, which makes no sense because she is supposed to be scaring them to death, which is why the heart attacks that is also ignored make perfect sense. Thay also remove the whole storyline about the phone ringing and the caller saying, “seven days”, which seems like a pretty important detail seeing as how much attention was paid to it in Ringu. Honestly, this whole thing has the production value of a weekly made for television “thriller” that the networks showed on a Sunday night because they knew the entire world was watching either football or Bob’s Burgers.

After all of that, this film is topped off not only by a happy ending, but one of the most conveniently stupid happy endings of all time. Not only is there no death for our protagonist, but somehow Takayama comes back to life, brings a dead child back from the grave and reunites him with his father, and then rides out into the sunset with Sadako, now also alive and looking less terrifying than ever, and roll credits. Why, you ask, does all of this occur? I honestly haze zero fucking clue other than the people that created this film hates us, hates horror and wanted everyone to suffer.

So…mission accomplished?

This film did so poorly that it was eventually removed from the lore and banished to the shadow realm, and a new sequel was filmed the following year using the writer and director of the first, which is now universally accepted as the one, true sequel. I need everyone to fully understand the implications of that. The same franchise that allows both the sequel and third entry of the American releases to hang out with them kicked this one entirely out of the clubhouse, and those films are also steaming piles of bad movie.

So there it is, the “lost” sequel to The Ring, and one that, in a just and fair universe, would stay lost. This came as a bonus film on my bluray of Ringu 2, and that is the only acceptable way to come into ownership of this movie, as any money spent on a copy with quickly manifest itself as a regret. Consider it in the thought of I did the suffering of watching this so that you do not have to.

Next week, we will be tackling the actual sequel to Ringu, and are going to have a much better time with it.

Until next time, Boils and Ghouls, I remain your humble servant in horror…

Jason Kuykendall has been a horror fan since the age of two, when his mother sat him down in front of When a Stranger Calls, so she began using horror movies as a babysitter. His favorite job was a mom and pop video store that he worked at when he was sixteen. He runs Creepy Bat Book Review but is thinking about firing and replacing himself due to how slack he’s become in his work. He’s made of 85% tattoos, 35% compassion, and 69% spite, and he also doesn’t understand math. He won’t pet your service dog, but he really, really wants to.

PLEASE NOTE: The views and opinions of the staff of Memento Mori Ink do not necessarily represent those of Memento Mori Ink or Crystal Lake Publishing. Thank you for understanding.