SADAKO (2019 - Japanese)

Studio:      Kadokawa Pictures
Director:    Hideo Nakata
Writer:      Noriaki Sugihara
Producer:  Shigeo Minakami, Reiko Imayasu, Kimio Hara
Stars:     Elaiza Ikeda, Takashi Tsukamoto, Hiroya Shimizu, Renn Kiriyama, Rie Tomosaka, Hitomi Sato, Himeka Himejima

Review Score:

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Summary:

A psychologist connects her missing brother to the strange case of a mysterious little girl believed to be Sadako reincarnated.

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Synopsis:     Show/Hide Spoilers

Believing her daughter to be Sadako reincarnated, psychic Hatsuko Sofue prepares to set fire to the padlocked closet where the little girl is confined. Sadako’s ghost breaks free from a rock pile concealing a cave on Oshima Island to appear inside Hatsuko’s apartment. The little girl supernaturally escapes the closet to join Sadako. Hatsuko collapses in fright as her corner of the Numata Apartment Complex erupts in flames.

At Kurokawa Memorial General Hospital, clinical psychologist Dr. Mayu Akikawa examines emotionally unstable patient Ms. Kurahashi. Mayu’s supervisor Dr. Fujii cautions Mayu against getting too friendly with unpredictable patients like Kurahashi.

Wandering the streets alone, Hatsuko’s daughter collapses after encountering the ghost of a woman who jumped off a bridge to her death. Police bring the mysterious little girl to the hospital.

Detectives inform Fujii and Mayu about the fire that killed five people, including suspected arsonist Hatsuko, at the apartment building. Detectives add that there is no public record for the little girl, whom Hatsuko raised in secret. The girl explains that her mother called her Sadako, although her real name remains unknown. Mayu sees the girl telekinetically toppling toys while being interviewed.

Mayu’s dropout brother Kazuma works with web marketing consultant Yusuke Ishida to boost his online presence as an aspiring YouTube personality. Ishida recommends recording a scary urban experience to excite Kazuma’s dwindling audience. Kazuma decides to investigate the apartment building fire.

Other children at the hospital tease the mysterious girl as an outcast due to her unsettling behavior. The girl telekinetically throws a rolling cart at her bullies.

The girl collapses after seeing a vision of a dying old man in an elevator. When Mayu consoles her afterward, the girl tells Mayu about being imprisoned in her mother’s closet. The girl senses Mayu had a lonely childhood too. The girl collapses after seeing Sadako’s ghost reflected on a TV.

Ishida contacts Mayu to report that her brother disappeared following his visit to Hatsuko Sofue’s apartment. Mayu watches online video of Kazuma’s investigation, which shows talismans covering the interior of the closet where the girl was imprisoned. Kazuma flees in fright when he encounters Sadako’s ghost. Mayu pauses on a strange image of skulls underwater.

Mayu encounters Ms. Kurahashi in an empty hospital hallway. An altercation ensues when Kurahashi realizes Mayu is afraid of her. Before Kurahashi’s anger fully intensifies, the girl entrances her. The girl then collapses.

Video of a well suddenly plays on a lobby television. Sadako crawls out of the well, then out of the television, and finally climbs atop Kurahashi. Sadako also grabs Mayu, who faints.

When she recovers, Mayu discovers the girl was taken to ICU in a coma. Kurahashi is readmitted for psychiatric care. Mayu tells Fujii about seeing a ghostly woman with long hair.

In a dream, Mayu relives the mysterious girl’s experience of imprisonment in a closet while her mother accuses her of being Sadako reincarnated. Believing her brother’s disappearance is connected, Mayu goes to see Kurahashi demanding to know who Sadako is. Kurahashi recounts the story of Sadako’s mother Shizuko Yamamura, a clairvoyant who killed herself following accusations of fraud. Shizuko’s daughter Sadako possessed the ability to strike people dead with a thought. Fearful of her power, Sadako’s father threw the girl down a well to kill her, but created a curse that killed many people.

When Kurahashi grabs her, Mayu sees a vision of Kazuma and Sadako. Kurahashi warns that Mayu’s cursed brother cannot be saved. After Mayu leaves, water pools on Kurahashi’s ceiling. Sadako emerges from beneath the bed to kill Kurahashi.

While watching another online video of her brother, Mayu sees images of a cave, a baby reflected in an eye, bodies rising from water, a woman falling to her death off a cliff, the submerged skulls seen previously, and also her brother. Ishida calls to say he watched the strange video too, although he does not know how it was uploaded.

Mayu and Ishida meet. Ishida tells Mayu about a cave on Oshima Island in Izu that became a shrine for dead priests until it was rendered off limits by a cave-in. A picture of the shrine shows a talisman like one seen inside the girl’s closet. Ishida also mentions an urban legend about a cursed video that once went around the internet. Mayu connects Ishida’s notes to Sadako’s origin and concludes Sadako was born on Oshima Island.

While taking a ferry to the island, Mayu warns Ishida that circumstances regarding the mysterious little girl’s upbringing somehow resurrected Sadako’s curse. At the cave, Mayu and Ishida meet an old woman who tells them unwanted babies were left to die inside the shrine and Sadako feeds on their souls. Mayu mentions that she and her brother grew up as orphans and wonders if she and Kazuma were called by Sadako to gather in the cave shrine with other abandoned spirits.

Despite warnings about high tide, Mayu and Ishida investigate the cave at night. A ghostly hand pulls Mayu through a rock pile, leaving Ishida outside.

Mayu learns Shizuko Yamamura actually abandoned her daughter when she sees a vision of the woman leaving Sadako in the cave as an infant. Sadako survived, which is how she manifested her horrible power.

A vision of the mysterious little girl appears. Writhing bodies rise out of a pool to begin pulling the girl underwater. Mayu embraces the girl, pledges to care for her, and pleads with her to fight back. Back at the hospital at the same time, the little girl comes out of her coma. Mayu sees the skulls and bones underwater as the vision of the girl vanishes.

Ishida finally gets into the cave. He and Mayu find Kazuma. As the full moon aligns with a circular opening overhead, Sadako rises to attack Mayu. Kazuma sacrifices himself to rescue his sister. Sadako drowns Kazuma underwater.

Now mentally unstable, Mayu recovers as a patient in her former hospital. Before being discharged, the little girl thanks Mayu for helping her come out of her coma. Left alone afterward, Mayu flinches at the sound of dripping water. Sadako then stalks Mayu in her room.

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Review:

What’s a sound strategy for rejuvenating a flagging fright film franchise that’s a dozen movies deep and creatively harangued by several decades’ worth of conflicting continuities? One suggestion would be to strip a movie’s mythology down to bare essentials while enlisting guidance from the property’s original cinematic mastermind. It worked for “Halloween,” so it tracks that “The Ring” would put similar shots in its venerable veins via “Sadako.”

To pick up the pieces of poorly conceived claptrap concerning a druid cult, a curveball involving a karate-kicking rapper, and a rock star’s polarizing reboot, Michael Myers went back to basics in 2018. By bringing John Carpenter along for the ride, “Halloween” (review here) renewed relations with fans and earned both commercial and critical success in the process.

Across the Pacific, “Ringu” faced not entirely dissimilar circumstances. Although its crossover with “Ju-On: The Grudge” had the pulpy pop of a midnight monster rally, “Sadako vs. Kayako” (review here) didn’t reflect the sincere stakes of its proper predecessors. Over on the American arm, “Rings” (review here) performed so poorly, its disappointing numbers killed Paramount’s overall interest in horror, reportedly making collateral damage out of “Friday the 13th’s” development pipeline.

Simply put, “Ringu” had run a weird course now in need of a new direction. Or rather, like “Halloween,” it needed redirection routing back to its roots.

Re-enter Hideo Nakata. Elbowing out 1995’s overlooked tele-movie “Ring: Kanzenban” (review here), it was Nakata who helped usher in the J-horror boom by directing “Ringu,” the hit feature film adaptation of Koji Suzuki’s novel. Nakata returned for “Ringu 2” the following year. But as “The Ring” grew into a many-headed multimedia beast, Nakata’s involvement was limited to the American sequel “The Ring Two” in 2005 and the series hadn’t seen him since. Following 14 more years of new sequels of varying quality, timing appeared optimal to return to the well, pun intended, to see if one of the franchise fathers could recapture the original movie’s macabre magic.

Screenwriter Noriaki Sugihara taps into the imagination of “Ringu’s” other chief architect for this installment’s story. “Sadako,” which is not to be confused with 2012’s “Sadako 3D,” purports to be based on “Tide,” the sixth book in Koji Suzuki’s bestselling “Ringu” series. Judging by Wikipedia’s summary, “Sadako” and “Tide” seem to share only broad strokes. None of the novel’s characters carry over. Neither do major events. The movie apparently retains only the idea of Sadako’s extended origin and some knock-on details, essentially un-complicating “Sadako” to go its own way with somewhat streamlined fiction.

Several women feature at “Sadako’s” center. First is a mysterious little girl who remains unnamed for the 99-minute runtime. Padlocked in a closet, the girl’s mother believes her to be Sadako reincarnated. Desperate to destroy Sadako’s spirit, the woman prepares to immolate the girl until supernatural intervention turns the tables into an altogether different tragedy.

Police admit the girl to a local hospital where psychologist Mayu witnesses an unexpected display of the girl’s telekinetic power. Meanwhile, Mayu learns her brother Kazuma dropped out of school to try his hand at social media stardom. With his subscriber base dwindling, Kazuma’s web marketing strategist suggests appeasing his audience by exploring a haunted location. Kazuma chooses the building that the girl’s mother set on fire and he soon vanishes after posting an unsettling video.

As Mayu begins experiencing strange visions, she comes to suspect her brother’s disappearance and the mysterious girl’s unknown origin are connected. The deeper Mayu digs, the closer she comes to discovering the truth about Sadako’s birth, as well as the resurrected curse threatening to kill her family.

Producers are presumably happy considering they got precisely what should have been predicted from giving “The Ring’s” reins back to Hideo Nakata. Whether you’ll feel the same way depends on how up you are for a déjà vu detour back to the familiar feel of the first “Ringu” feature.

Nakata applies his turn-of-this-century touch to give “Sadako” a faint throwback tone. Cellphones are used incidentally. Social media gets loosely integrated into plotting, although a side arc involving a viral YouTube video fades into irrelevancy instead of replacing the cursed VHS tape like some might anticipate. Yet outside of modern inclusions, “Sadako” plays like a pretty traditional vengeful ghost yarn that feels stylistically aligned with J-horror’s heyday.

This means you can expect typical trademarks like a ghostly girl, online research revealing bits of backstory, eyes widened by nightmarish apparitions, culture-specific superstitions, and of course, a longhaired woman crawling out of a television. On an aesthetic level, “Sadako” opts for a skeletal piano score, a lightly bleached color palette, and soap opera characterizations. At times, these instruments combine to play a concert according to made-for-TV notations. But the slowly smoldering suspense stays true to a 1990s tempo that synchs “Sadako’s” horror hallmarks with “Ringu’s.”

“Sadako” progresses too leisurely to quicken pulses of audiences anxious for action. Its paranormal PG-13 spooks aren’t primed to impress viewers who respond to more visceral violence either. The filmmakers set out for something technologically straightforward, narratively efficient, and relatively low risk. In returning to proven formula, Hideo Nakata and company deliver a thriller that’s classically creepy, if a bit basic. Considering the hills and valleys this series has seen over 20 years, staying safe may have been the smartest move to make.

NOTE: There is a brief post-credits sting.

Review Score: 65

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