Directed by Tsutomu Hanabusa
Starring Satomi Ishihara, Koji Seto and Yusuke Yamamoto
It finally came to this. In order to do this review, I did something that I swore that I would never do. And we're not talking some fly-by-moment stance. It was something I was dead set against for YEARS.
I signed up for Netflix.
Now, my legion of (six) fans out there may or may not be aware, but I'm a hardcore advocate of brick-and-mortar video stores. Going to great video stores as a kid is one of my precious childhood memories, with the famous store appropriately named "Mall Video" located in my hometown mall still holding its place as the Greatest Video Store I've Ever Set Foot In. A close second would be the chain Hollywood Video in my college town. Both places had something in common - a stock that went way beyond stuff from the last two years, and a copiously stocked old school horror aisle. It's an experience that I never thought could be replicated typing stuff into a screen on your TV.
I expected to be blown away by Netflix much like High-Definition TV (don't ask me why I was against that - it really was a moronic stance). But, really folks...I'm a little underwhelmed. I certainly don't HATE Netflix, but it's nowhere near the life-altering experience that I thought it would be now that I've gotten over this bizarre hatred. Who knows, maybe it would be different if I was into more modern TV shows. But I'm not. Eat me, story arcs involving large groups of "complex" (read: unlikable) characters where the satisfaction comes from some sort of cathartic "just desserts" that the characters in question get. Where was I? Oh, right - Netflix. What it DOES have going for it is a decent horror section, and the means to review a few horror movies without having to, you know, do what I've been doing for all these years and blindly buying DVDs.
And the first movie I checked out was...Sadako 3D. Epic story, I know. I'd heard of this movie and was VERY stoked by the prospects of it, because people, I am a HUGE fan of the Ringu/Ring movie franchise. Moreso the Japanese series, but even the American ones are fine - even that godawful second movie with the hilarious CGI deer attack sequence. The series has gotten me through some rough times in recent years, as they rank in second place (a distant second, but second nonetheless) behind Friday the 13th as my favorite "horror movie falling asleep whore" series. There's just this calming quality about the movies that makes me forget about everything in life and puts me right to sleep. In the good way, I promise. The whole premise of Ringu seems tailor-made for 3D, so maybe I'm biased watching it from home, but this movie was also a little...underwhelming.
First off, I was surprised to find out in my extensive Wikipedia research that, much like a couple of the original movies, it was based on a book by Koji Suzuki. Makes sense, I suppose. The story involves some a string of teen suicides all connected to a video shown on a prominent web show - nutbag artist Kashiwada Seiji sitting alone in a room who stares into the screen and says "you're not the one." Foreshadowing alert. Since we need a bit more character connection, the introductory phase of the movie takes place in an All-Girls' school where Akane Ayukawa is our star teacher who takes on the role of trying to stop the death from spreading amongst her students.
Satomi Ishihara takes the reins of playing our main Ringu girl in peril, and she's got some stiff competition from the past, because Nanako Matsushima is legit one of the five or six best horror heroines of all time in the original flick. And Naomi Watts is no slouch, either. Ishihara is...there, I guess. She does alright with the material that she's given, and that's an interesting statement in and of itself, since she actually WROTE THE SCREENPLAY for this movie. Some of her lines are a little suspect, but in a movie series that demands that it's main heroine be likable to carry a movie where we don't see the main villain for the VAST majority of the running time, this character needs to hold our attention. And she really doesn't. So -2 points there.
Let's see how fast I can wrap up this dog and pony show. There are also a couple detective characters who don't figure much into the plot aside from moving it along whenever we need to find things out, but it turns out that Kashiwada (the aforementioned nutbag artist, for those keeping score) dealt with one too many trolls while conducting his web show and has decided to take revenge on the entire human race by resurrecting Sadako Yamamura, the dangerous psychic who has the power to kill victims from beyond the grave after watching her cursed video tape. But since video tapes are a little archaic, he had to resort to other methods - like killing random women and dumping them into the well that Sadako was thrown into. Seems like a sound plan to me. This plan does not succeed, and instead, Kashiwada is forced to find a new human host for Sadako. Since our main heroine ALSO has psychic powers, I'll give you three guesses as to who that turns out to be.
A big part of why I felt so underwhelmed by this movie is in that story. If you were confused reading it, I don't blame you, because I feel that it's too complicated for its own good. The prospect of a 3D Ring flick seems to write itself to me. You've got a movie series about a cursed video tape that houses a vengeful ghost who kills anyone who watches it. To me, this is a screenwriter's dream if you're given the reins. Take a group of vacationing teens/college kids. Send them to the inn where Sadako's well is located. Have them find one of those old, antiquey VCRs on site, make a few jokes about just how old and decrepit this technology is, and throw on that curious unmarked video laying nearby. Maybe one of the kids throws the video up on Youtube as a joke. Simple. Less is more. Instead, we have way more anciliary characters than we know what to do with and a big, complicated setup that takes WAY too long to get going and reveal itself. As such, there's not a whole lot of tension to be had here.
Now, I will admit that the movie DOES kind of redeem itself in the final trimester, with Akane running from an army of imperfect Sadako clones (the ghosts of the women thrown into the well by Kashiwada) and a showdown with Sadako herself that is pretty much perfectly laid out and written. But everything that leads up to that point is pretty paint-by-numbers, and it's a damn shame, because this is one of those movies that seemed like such a can't-miss that it boggled my mind that no one in the States was interested in the concept. I guess I can still hold out hope for RinGrudge, but who am I kidding, that ship has sailed.
** out of ****. Got its moments, but overall a miss. Avoid.
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