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Released by: Well Go USA
Released on: 6/4/2013
Director: Tsutomu Hanabusa
Cast: Satomi Ishihara, Kí´ji Seto, Ai Hashimoto
Year: 2012
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The Movie:
Akane (Satomi Ishihara) shares her life with her long-time boyfriend Takanori (Kí´ji Seto) and teaches at an all-girl school. One day she reprimands a student who's trying to find a “cursed†video clip on the internet, a clip where a man commits suicide. And anyone who watches the clip will also commit suicide upon the conclusion of the clip. Later on, that same girl finally finds the clip and kills herself afterward.
A gruff non-believing detective and his ready-to-believe-anything lackey are investigating a number of suicides that happened in the last week or so, right around the time the video was supposed to have surfaced. The old codger suspects Akane is somehow involved and maybe even a real suspect, but his investigation leads him to find out there really is a curse. A young homicidal lunatic created the video in an attempt to resurrect Sadako, or “Sâ€, a young woman with telekinetic powers who was murdered by a scared community by being thrown down a well and left to die slowly. And it appears Sadako (Ai Hashimoto) is looking for a new vessel to come back into the world and exact her revenge by creating massive worldwide chaos.
After Takanori is taken into the world of the internet by the ghost and held captive in an iPhone (yes, that's correct), its up to Akane and Detective Blumpkin to get to the bottom of things and stop two things from happening: Sadako from achieving her goal and Takanori from dying. They go to the source, the place where Sadako was thrown into a well to die, in order to confront the supernatural powerhouse and her minions of crab-like demon things.
A sequel of sorts to the well-known Ring trilogy, and adapted from a book Kí´ji Suzuki (who also wrote Ring), Sadako as a film is only marginally entertaining. It's not at all scary, or even creepy. It's goofy. The guy who brings the ghost back is way over the top with his lunacy, the gorgeous female lead is amazingly annoying when gasping for her life, character cliches run rampant, and the movie's climax is just plain dumb. The moments to scare are all jump-scares made possible by the really loud noise that accompanies the activity we are supposed to frightened by, which is always a total cop-out.
Visually there are some interesting moments but overall it's a by-the-numbers production that lacks any real memorable or noteworthy scenes. The most noteworthy item is how the CG looks, which is pretty terrible. There are crab-like humanoid whatevers in the final act that look positively dreadful when animated. But even worse are moments where the 3D is about to kick into gear. They really hammer on the gimmick of 3D with lots of shattered glass, disgusting snake-like hair, hands coming out of video screens, and open-mouthed critters coming at you. This is fine, mind you, but it's so blatant when something is about to be the focus of a 3D effect. Its like in the 60s and 70s Hanna-Barbera cartoons where you could tell what part of the cartoon character was going to move before it moved due to the cheap animation techniques they used. It's that bad. But it is laughable at times, which is the only thing that keeps this stinker from being a complete waste of time. But even then, you could skip this one altogether and not worry about feeling you missed something. You won't have.
Video/Audio/Extras:
A 1080p AVC encoded picture in an aspect of 16:9 widescreen is what you get with this Blu-ray. Colors are nice but not outstanding, and some outdoor scenes look great if in the daylight. Detail is pretty strong but in darker scenes things don't look as well. Black levels are less than desirable, showing heavy grain which doesn't make sense as its obvious this was recorded on digital equipment. The audio is 5.1 Surround Sound track in Japanese and with optional English subtitles. The levels are up and down depending on the scene of course, but really loud when the scares kick in. The track makes good use of the surround technology and provides plenty of rear channel activity.
Extras are slim. A trailer for the feature and trailers for other Well Go USA releases.
The Final Word:
Just not worth your valuable time. It's further proof that Americans aren't the only ones who put out crappy horror movies.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
Not sure how this one got even past the development stage...Would be interesting to see if the book is as dumb!
