I am not ashamed to admit that the first one had me scared at hello. An unnamed evil that was a weird fusion of ghost and technology; I couldn't avoid doing a double take at televisions for a solid week. Combined with a visual palette of water imagery and a clear, unfolding story based on that video, it made it a very good horror movie - maybe one of the best I have ever seen.

In his attempt to live up to that standard, Hideo Nikata made every motion at recreating in the sequel both the visuals and the feel of Gore Vorebinski's The Ring. (One must reflexively add at this point that the Gore Verbinski version is itself based on a Japanese film Ringu, but having seen that picture I would say that comparison belittles Verbinski and definitely gives the original too much credit.) The palette of aquatic images - rain, bathtubs, Seattle - remains and is effective though not particularly novel. Water is a regularly used symbol for the unknown in Western literature. The subtle blues applied to an urban blandness of the first piece give way somewhat to a more suburban milieu with accompanying warmth, but the change is not so drastic that you dwell on it. Likewise, this picture does not spare on the freaky. If it is possible to be scared by a herd of herbivores, I think that this movie manages it.

Here, however, is where the analogy ends. Whereas the first picture focused much more strictly on the video itself in an unfolding revelation and a time crunch — if the characters did not finish the challenge they would be dead in a couple days — this picture there is really no time crunch and no video. (OK, there is a video and time crunch but it is not nearly as much of a plot unifier and enhancer of tension as before.) The contrast between the over-mature child, played by David Dorfman, and his mother, played by Naomi Watts, is also lost in a sort of new interaction. Now she is way over-mothering, and he is just weird and sickly - and that is when he is not even possessed. The acting leaves a little to be desired for, at least in comparison. The acting in the first picture was most successful in moments when the characters didn't say anything, when there was just stunned silence and fear; in this picture I almost feel as if the characters were uncomfortable with the silence and say something inappropriate to make up for it.