March 28, 2016

My journey into the darkest well of the J-horror universe continues! I’ve already revisited the original Japanese RINGU and its sequel RINGU 2. Then I jumped to 2002 for the American remake of THE RING, paired up with its 2005 follow-up THE RING TWO. This week, I wanted a modern take on the mythology of these films, so I delved head first into 2012’s SADAKO 3D, a modern version of the RING legend! What were the results? Pretty darned fun if you ask me!

First and foremost, let me emphasize that I had heard nothing but unsavory things about the latter movies in THE RING franchise. In particular, the general consensus online for this one was that it wasn’t a very good film, but I always like to judge things on my own — and I’m glad I did! I invited 2 fellow RING-enthusiasts over to watch the film in 3D, the way it’s intended to be presented and we had a hell of a lot of fun with it. I can completely understand not liking the movie if you watch it in a regular 2D presentation. Sure, some of the CGI gags are probably laughable in regular 2D, but look – 3D is a gimmick, and we’ve made it this far into the franchise. So in 3D, the gimmicks work like gangbusters! Take a look at this photo! This is from my iPhone taken behind my pair of 3D glasses!

Awesome, right?!

Now onto the movie itself.

I’ve always wondered how they could possibly update the Sadako legend for present day, considering it was so reliant on the concept of seeing and sharing an old VHS tape. SADAKO 3D does a wonderful job and getting us back into this world and showing us something brand new with this concept.

The movie opens with a man throwing a girl down a well, followed by his suicide which is broadcast streaming live over the Internet. For those select few that were watching, the police are now investigating their strange and mysterious simultaneous deaths, all ruled as suicides. Could it be possible that there’s a cursed Internet video that drives the viewer to take their own life? Of course, we already know there’s much more than meets the eye and we know who the culprit is!

One of the early victims is a student of Akane Ayukawa, a teacher whom we later find out has psychic abilities, similar to those of Sadako. She had once used them in grade school to stop a ravaging maniac in the halls of her school, which terrified and freaked out the other students, except for the sweet & gentle Takanori Ando, who ends up becoming her live-in boyfriend. Detective Koiso continues his investigation into these mysterious deaths, while Akane searches for answers on her own. It appears that not only has Sadako been unleashed by crazed artist Seiji Kashiwada, but she’s now searching for a new body to be reborn in.

Along the way, there are some traditional scares as you’d expect. Sadako comes flying out of computer monitors for those that brave the suicide video. Sometimes it’s her hair that emerges first and entangles her would-be victims, other times she’s reaching her hand straight out towards camera. At times she appears on busy city street electronic billboards and makes one startling appearance that I won’t spoil here to the Detective that literally shocked me and my fellow audience members.

The third act is where things start to get a bit crazy, and OK… maybe a little convoluted too. But at that point, I didn’t care. I was enjoying the ride and happy enough with some cool new ideas for this franchise, especially after enduring the dismal American sequel.

It turns out Seiji Kashiwada purposely was attempting to resurrect Sadako to seek out his online enemies for revenge. He was a well-known digital artist (undoubtedly on DeviantArt) who was called out as a plagiarist and had his reputation tarnished. So he decides to bring back the legendary curse of Sadako to seek out those who wronged him. (And beyond!) Akane’s final confrontation with Sadako is interesting, as she emerges inhabiting the bodies of several sacrificed victims, only with strange, insect-like long legs. Some of it’s bad CGI, some of it looks like practical FX. It’s cool in concept and kind of creepy, but doesn’t work 100 percent. The ending, itself, definitely is a bit confusing and unsatisfactory, but then again… this was followed up by yet another sequel, SADAKO 3D 2, which of course, I’m already on the hunt for.

It doesn’t carry the scares or shocks of the original RING by any means, but at this point, we’ve all become so familiar with the rules and beats of this franchise that I was OK with seeing something that tried to be radically different. There’s a new American movie titled RINGS coming later this year and early word is it’s a prequel? Using the entire video tape conceit seems like going backwards to me. With people so obsessed with their iPhones, I rather liked the idea of even making those mundane devices dangerous.

More J-horror to follow!