General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Ring Two (1999 film)

Ring 2 (リング2) is a 1999 Japanese horror film directed by Hideo Nakata and the direct sequel to his 1998 hit Ring (リング), continuing the story of the cursed videotape created by the vengeful spirit of Sadako Yamamura. It was released in Japan on January 23, 1999, runs 95 minutes, and was distributed by Toho.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Japanese title	リング2 (Ringu 2)¹
Release	January 23, 1999 (Japan); 95 minutes; distributed by Toho¹
Director	Hideo Nakata, returning from Ring (1998)²
Screenplay	Hiroshi Takahashi, an original theatrical script¹
Lead cast	Miki Nakatani (Takano Mai), Hitomi Sato (Kurahashi Masami), Kyoko Fukada (Sawaguchi Kanae), with Nanako Matsushima and Hiroyuki Sanada reprising their roles³
Music	Kenji Kawai; theme song by Miho Imai³^•¹
Series position	Replaced Rasen (1998) as the canonical sequel to Ring, beginning a film-original continuity⁴

Spoilers

Plot

The film picks up where Ring left off. Sadako's corpse, recovered from the well, is autopsied a week after the incidents of the first film, and the examination yields a disturbing result: although she was supposedly killed 30 years earlier, her body shows a post-mortem interval of only one to two years, implying she survived in the well for nearly three decades.¹

Mai Takano (Miki Nakatani), the lover of Ryuji Takayama, doubts the circumstances of his death and begins searching for Reiko Asakawa, who has disappeared with her young son Yoichi. With the television worker Okazaki, who has taken over Reiko's investigation of the cursed tape, Mai visits the psychiatric hospital where Masami Kurahashi, the girl who witnessed the first film's opening death, is confined, and finds that Sadako's grudge has taken root inside her. She also learns that the curse's one escape, copying the tape and showing it to someone else, no longer works.¹

Guided to a reunion with Reiko, Mai discovers that Yoichi suffers the same symptoms as Masami. Taking the boy to the inn on Izu Oshima run by Sadako's relative, she attempts, with the doctor Kawajiri, to act as a medium and dissolve Sadako's grudge from Yoichi's mind with water. The grudge proves stronger than expected: Yamamura and Kawajiri drown in a pool, and Mai and Yoichi find themselves inside the well where Sadako was killed. Mai escapes with the help of Ryuji's spirit, but the ending offers no clean resolution, as Sadako's will has already possessed Okazaki, who betrayed and caused the death of the high school girl Kanae.¹

Production background

Ring (1998) was a major hit in Japan, but its same-day companion sequel Rasen, directed by Joji Iida, drew a comparatively tepid response. Nakata's producers therefore asked him to direct a new sequel to his own film, and the result was Ring 2.⁵ Because Rasen had been the adaptation of Suzuki's novel Spiral, the new film replaced it as the sequel to Ring in the film canon, and the two series timelines diverge from that point.⁴

The screenplay was an original work written for the theater by Hiroshi Takahashi, not an adaptation of Suzuki's original novel, and the film was shot by Hideo Yamamoto with music by Kenji Kawai.¹^•³^•⁸ Production was by Kadokawa Shoten, with Masoto Hara as producer.³ Unlike the other theatrical Ring films, it is the only entry in the Japanese series not based on any of Suzuki's written works.⁶

Reception and place in the series

The film outperformed the first Ring at the Japanese box office and established a film-original "Ring world" that departed from Rasen and the novels; the legend continued in the prequel Ring 0: Birthday (2000).⁷ Several cast members returned in their original roles, including Nanako Matsushima as Reiko, Hiroyuki Sanada as Ryuji, and Hitomi Sato as Masami, joined by new cast members such as Kyoko Fukada.⁷

Critical responses have been divided. The New Zealand International Film Festival's 2001 notes ranked it as a sequel "in many ways better than the film it follows," crediting Nakata with presenting Sadako's curse as a lethal, unstoppable psychic virus and refusing a redemptive ending.³ A Bloody Disgusting retrospective placed it fourth among the series' films, faulting a threadbare script and little forward momentum in the mythology while praising its unrelenting sense of dread.⁴ Nakata later directed the 2005 American sequel The Ring Two for DreamWorks, which shares the possession storyline of the 1999 film but uses a new script.⁵

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026