Great storytelling always comes to grips with the problem of evil.

J.R.R. Tolkien's trilogy of novels Lord of the Rings gives the subject an epic dimension, creating a mythology that's similar to folklore that took millennia to fully develop. The challenge for director Peter Jackson has been to find visual equivalents for Tolkien's literary imagination. The good news is that the second installment of the film trilogy, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, is even better in its cinematic expression than the first.

Most of Jackson's early films were horror movies (The Frighteners and Braindead), and he has successfully adapted his love for the unreal and the grotesque to Tolkien's transcendent vision. The forces of death and destruction in The Two Towers look as if they've been vomited up from the bowels of the earth, and we get goose bumps of fear when we watch these demonic figures wreak havoc on everything around them.

Jackson and screenwriters Frances Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Stephen Sinclair construct a visionary action spectacle that rivals George Lucas (Star Wars) and the late Akira Kurosawa (Kagemusha and Throne of Blood) at their best. The movie places more emphasis on the swashbuckling exploits of knight-like figures such as Aragorn (Viggo Mortenson) than the novel, which emphasized the role of the humble hobbits in deciding the fate of Middle-earth. But the final product remains true to Tolkien's spirit in its attention to physical detail and its appreciation for grand historical sweep.

The filmmakers plunge us into the story without much exposition; those who haven't seen the first installment may have trouble keeping up. The action is set 7,000 years ago in Middle-earth, a place filled with men, hobbits, elves, dwarfs, wizards and talking trees.

Frodo (Elijah Wood), a young hobbit, has been entrusted by the wise wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) with a task that will save Middle-earth. He must return a golden ring to the volcano where it was forged to keep it from the dark lord Sauron (voice of Sala Baker) who wants to conquer the land's free creatures.

This totemic object confers on those who wear it a magic potency that always corrupts its users. It dramatically illustrates the temptations of power that can lead men to evil.

Frodo is a very different hero from those in the quest stories of the Celtic and Norse sagas Tolkien synthesized. The hobbit's goal is to renounce power rather than seize it. His humility, an inversion of the usual pagan archetype, reflects the novelist's Christian worldview, which the filmmakers preserve.

A fellowship representing the free races has been formed to escort the ring to its destruction. But when The Two Towers begins, the team has been fractured into three groups, and the movie crosscuts between their separate narratives.

Frodo and fellow hobbit Sam (Sean Astin) hook up with a clammy, grotesque, child-sized creature named Gollum (voice of Andy Serkis) who offers to lead them safely into Mordor, where Sauron dwells, and then to Mount Doom, where the ring can be destroyed. Gollum, a computer-animation figure, is the film's most haunting character. He was once in possession of the ring (“my precious”) himself, and this has made him into a personality at war with himself.

In a compelling demonstration of inner spiritual warfare, the two sides of his personality openly argue with each other. Should he become Frodo's loyal servant? Or should he betray him to repossess the ring?

Sam doesn't trust Gollum. But Frodo displays a Christian-like faith in the power of redemption. “I have to help him, Sam,” the hobbit declares, “because I have to believe he'll come back.” In a dramatic masterstroke, Frodo himself will be similarly conflicted at a later time when he's tempted to use the ring's power against the armies of darkness.

Pippin (Billy Boyd) and Merry (Dominic Monaghan), also hobbits, follow a different narrative thread. They have escaped from the savage Orcs into the mysterious Fanghorn Forest where they meet up with Treebeard (voice of John Rhys-Davies), a giant Ent who's shepherd to the other trees. “Nobody cares for the woods any more,” this leafy King Kong laments, referring to their despoliation by the evil wizard Saruman (Christopher Lee). This points up Tolkien's sympathy for an environmentalism that connects the disruption of our ecosystems with other forms of evil.

At one moment Pippin is so discouraged he considers giving up and returning to the Shire, the hobbit homeland. But Merry argues that, if evil prevails, there won't be a Shire left. This underlines one of the movie's central themes: There are times when evil must be stood up to and confronted.

In a different context and place, Sam reiterates the same idea to Frodo. “There's some good in the world,” the hobbit declares, “and it's worth fighting for.”

This anti-appeasement message carries over into the movie's third plot strand: the defense of the kingdom of Rohan against Saruman's armies of Urak-hai. Three members of the fellowship—Aragorn, the elf-archer Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and the dwarf Gimli (also Rhys-Davies)—come to the rescue of the besieged King Theoden (Bernard Hill). The good wizard Gandalf reappears to give the wavering Theoden some succinct advice. “You must fight,” he proclaims.

Jackson stages a long battle sequence between the Viking-like Rohan soldiers and the ghoul-like Urak-hai. The weaponry and tactics are redolent of 12th- and 13th-century medieval warfare. But the imagery of massed armies is so majestic and the skirmishes are so intense that we believe cosmic forces have been unleashed. (The violence, while never gratuitous, is too intense for kids under 12.)

Jackson's sincerity and skill restore to the big-budget extravaganza an often forgotten part of the movie-going experience—a sense of wonder. Our deep enjoyment of The Two Towers springs from the sense that we're being transported on an epic journey by filmmakers who are as excited as we are about the trek. We're persuaded that the fate of the world somehow hinges on the struggle between good and evil up there on the screen.

John Prizer is currently based in Washington, D.C.