The Ring / The Ring Two

Composed by Hans Zimmer, Henning Lohner, and Martin Tillman

07 - The Ferry (3:15)
08 - I'll Follow Your Voice (6:28)
09 - She Never Sleeps (2:17)
10 - Let the Dead Get In (3:59)
11 - Seven Days (3:24)
12 - Television (4:00)

Additional Music by James Dooley and Trevor Morris

Orchestrated by Bruce Fowler

Conducted by Fiachra Trench and Gavin Greenaway

Produced by Trevor Morris

Released by Decca Records on January 11th, 2005

Total Running Time: 63:11

     I left the theater after seeing The Ring completely and utterly confused. Nothing about the movie made any sense really. And there were plenty of little moments in the film that added up to nothing at all. As my brother and I talked back and forth about what we had seen, we both came to the same conclusion…it sucked. Still, being the connoisseur of cinema that I am, I decided to check out the original Japanese version, Ringu, when it was released on DVD. That was even more upsetting because it was a much better film than its American counterpart. And even though the effects and make-up work were not as high quality as the American rip-off, I was heavily creeped out by what I did see. With the director of Ringu coming over to our shores to make his American film debut with The Ring Two, I was hoping to get a decent horror flick from the sequel. Unfortunately, the reviews and the word of mouth has been quite negative.

     While the original score from Hans Zimmer and Friends never got a decent release, the soundtrack to the second film supposedly gives us selections from both. When I use the word “supposedly”, I mean that the production of this disc is so shoddy that you can’t really tell where anything is from. There is nothing to designate which tracks are from which film, aside from a few track titles that give a  little bit of a hint now and then. This I found to be quite an annoying oversight. Additionally, there are multiple long tracks on this album that range in time from between six and eleven minutes. While many Zimmer scores of the past had experienced this curious arrangement, I’ve always found it to be aggravating when looking for a particular section of the score, and here it is no different.

     The music for the Ring films follows the typical horror pattern for the most part, but it occasionally manages to incorporate a few intriguing additions. By far the most profound effect on the music seems to be Mark Snow’s synth work on the X-Files. Several times I swore I could hear snippets of some of his signature pieces on that show, though performed on strings here as opposed to a piano. The music is less atmospheric than what you’d be expecting, with lots of tension building moments in the strings, particularly the driving bass sounds provided by cello. These sound similar to what Cliff Eidleman provided in Star Trek VI, though with the occasional bolstering via electronic backbeat.

    Things open strong enough with "The Well". It possesses what a score of this type needs: rumbling strings, a driving sense of unease, and a nice, creepy theme played on piano. It’s firmly entrenched in the familiar, while adding some nice touches of its own. At eleven minutes in length, it covers all the highlights, though it’s a shame that pretty much all the good material from this score is covered in just one track. After that, the rest of the cues all cover the same basic material and end up melding together, failing to make any lasting impression in the process. By the end, the music has descended into a weird mixture of orchestra and techno (starting with "Let the Dead Get In"). I don’t see exactly how this will fit well into the score, and it strikes me as being completely out of place from all the previous cues. By the final cue, this style becomes absolutely annoying as well. It’s really unfortunate that this is the case because the album opens on a strong note.

     Workable in the movies, but bland on CD, the scores will fail to entice all but the serious fans out there who loved the work in the film.

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