Movie Night #57:  Ringu 2 (1999)
     Director:  Hideo Nakata
     Cast:  Miki Nakatani, Hitomi Sato, Kyoko Fukada
     Plot:  Sadako's terror continues to haunt those who watch her video.  Whoever watches the VHS tape receives a phone call, informing them that they will die in 7 days.  After uncovering her body in the first movie, and then disappearing after the death of her ex-husband, the ex-husbands assistant is trying to put the pieces together. 

When she arrives at the mental hospital housing a girl that witnessed the horrific event happening to her best friend (first scene in the first flick), she realizes that the psychic imprint of Sadako is permanently stamped on this girls mind.  With psychic powers of her own, the assistant begins to follow the clues to figure out what happened to the mother and her son from the first movie.  Meanwhile, the doctors who have the body conducted a autopsy on it, and discovered that the body in the well isn't that of a little girl - in fact, the body only died 2 years ago....

I saw the Second American "The Ring" movie, and was so disappointed that I had almost no desire to see the original flick that it was based on - and I could not have been more wrong.  In fact, I should have reversed that reaction completely.  The Ring was a good remake, but the original was also very good.  The American sequel sucked (I'll spoil it for you:  Summara possess Naomi Watts little boy so that she can watch TV all day and night - she becomes a couch potato, and for some reason we're supposed to find this scarey), but the Japanese sequel was spot-on.  The original characters aren't even in the first half of it, and most of them die off during the course. 

I was so impacted by this flick, I decided to make Sadako a returning character on my comic, @$$hole - in fact, she becomes my roommate and changes her name to Susie. 

After Ringu 2 was over, we started watching the first 20 minutes or so on Star Trek: Nemesis - but it was late, and people started leaving, so I shut it off and went to bed.  Next week, another fun Movie Night - which may even have a theme...not sure yet, but I'll post details later.