
Just finished transcribing my latest batch of Heroine notes. The story is growing at an alarming rate, though the word count is not necessarily rising by leaps and bounds. This novella is going to be dark, claustrophobic, and very frightening. I really don’t want to say more, which is why I’m playing the adjective game instead of giving you any plot details. Trust me, you’ll want to read this one sans previews or excerpts … and probably with a couple of lights on.
Heroine
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Now, I’m afraid I have to warn you about a particularly awful movie. It’s ironic that the first Ring movie should be about a videotape that kills you after you watch it, because the Ring Two is a film that will make you want to kill yourself after you watch it … or quite possibly halfway through it, thus preventing you from having to watch the equally odious second half.
I enjoyed the first Ring because I thought it was a fairly original story (as much as a remake can possibly be original), and the cinematography had an atmosphere quality that reminded me of Cape Breton. The film takes place in Washington State, which with its secluded coastal towns and occasional lighthouse is not much different from Canada’s East Coast (except Washington’s annual rainfall is probably more than that of the Maritimes combined). Ring Two has that same dark, wet atmosphere, but unfortunately that’s all it has. The film manages to transcend awful and reach such a level of mind-numbing boredom that I cannot even recommend the film for any possible kitsch value. Nothing happens! There are so many long tracking shots of people walking through dark houses and down unlit corridors that you can almost read the director’s thoughts, Come on, let’s stretch this out a little bit more, we gotta reach that ninety-minute runtime. Then there’s the scene where the woman and her son are attacked in their car by a herd of CGI deer. I’m not kidding. I thought the filmmakers might be kidding, but no, it was not an outtake from Scary Movie 4. The CGI deer attack is never explained or even mentioned later in the film, nor do we find out why it was deer and not, say, badgers or chipmunks, which at least would have been funny. That in itself is a good way to describe Ring Two: not scary, not funny, and not worth your time. Avoid it at all costs.



