Sadako DX

I just watched this movie for the first time after being a fan of this franchise for about two years now. People who are familiar with the franchise. Will know that many of the films in this franchise are pretty boring. That's what I expected from this one, but I was actually entertained throughout the entirety of it. Sure, some of the dialogue was cringe and some of the characters were kind of annoying at times, but other than that I found the premise to be very interesting and most of the characters likeable. At the end all of the seriousness is thrown out of the window and just decides to get goofy, which I actually found to be pretty fitting for this film. So ignore all the people giving this bad review's because it isn't like the original. Just sit down and embrace the silliness and you'll probably have a good time.

Sadako DX is the perfect example of "too much hands kill the baby", this new movie, was directed by someone who haven't done ANY single horror movie. Did I forget to mention that this is an horror movie? Yeah, it is a "horror movie" but it didn't felt like it... It felt more like a cringey ass Japanese comedy movie more than an actual horror movie, lots of bad jokes, bad quality actors who overreact everything that happens in the movie and also forced jumpscares but those jumpscares ain't scary as they'd be... THEY'RE ACTUALLY TRYNA SCARE YOU WITH A MOBILE PHONE RINGING DUDE.

Dreadful movie..

I saw the movie at the theater today and it did not disappoint. The advantages of the film were the following: it was well set, the atmosphere was adequate, the youthful characters were so unpleasant that they all deserved to die for idiots (and the film leaves us a great surprise about them), there is a strange but fast plot and the ending is unexpected and fantastic. There are only three jumpscares and the sequences where Sadako appears are extraordinary. By far the Japanese are much better at treating their characters than Hollywood cinema. This film is a thorough demonstration of how to make good cinema without insulting the intelligence of the viewer. And it has another plus: it makes you laugh. Very good.

"Sadako DX" is a bad movie that tries to mix nostalgia with modern elements, targeting generation Z, the result is a disastrous script that at first manages to bring nostalgia but soon becomes ridiculous when trying to parody TikTok trends and Twitter. The soundtrack is irrelevant, the editing gets tired and even seems to have been done by an internet influencer, the cinematography is lousy as if emulating an episode of some cheap children's TV series. In the midst of the chaos, the only thing that stands out is the performance of Fuka Koshiba who tries to give interest to her character, the rest of the cast is poorly directed and mainly the director did a totally horrendous job. Definitely a horror movie, but speaking of the horror that results as a final product. "Ringu" should have remained in the analog era and not touch the digital times.

Of all the Ring and Sadako related films I've seen, this is the only one that truly isn't scary at all. Many of them are bad, many are underwhelming, but every one has at least a scene here or there that's genuinely scary. None of that here. Most of this movie is just unfunny banter between highly forgettable characters.

This movie deserves some points for at least trying to evolve the concept of the Ring, and doing something new. The curse, or virus, "mutates", meaning the 7 days time frame is now only 24 hours. While this seems an obvious attempt to appeal to Gen Z's short attention spans, it does show at least some attempt at new ideas. There are more ideas like that in the movie, that I won't share, because of spoilers. There are some homages to the original, in the sense that the main characters have to do a lot of detective work to figure out the curse. This gets so specific after a while that I honestly lost the plot for a bit. It even has a call back reference to the small pox virus, as written about in the original novel.

Despite all this, the movie fails at its basic task: scaring the viewer. It seems that the further this franchise goes, the more Sadako becomes just a footnote in her own story. She's hardly even seen in the film, which is mostly taken up by the increasingly elaborate curse and its intricate mechanics.

At the end of the movie, the whole thing turns into a straight up spoof, with the movie itself being keenly aware that it's not being serious anymore. As wacky as some of the other installments are (Looking at you, Sadako 3D number one and two), they were never intended to be funny. This movie clearly is. This is truly a sign that the franchise has lost its way, resorting to comedy out the sheer inability to frighten us any longer.

What a shame.