Sadako 3D (2012)

Akane is a high school teacher who hears a rumor from her students that there is actual footage on the Internet of someone's suicide. The footage is said to drive anyone who sees it to also commit suicide. Akane does not believe the rumor at first, but when one of her female students dies after viewing the footage, she and her boyfriend Takanori are fatefully drawn into the horror. Sadako 3D was even more stupid than i expected it to be but also way more boring and cheesy that anyone else would also expect and a total waste of time and money. (0/10)

"The Ring" ("Ringu") was groundbreaking and innovative back in its time, and the following movies - read parts 2 and 0, as well as the Korean version, but not the American version (which was just beyond awful) - were great. And in the spirit of the previous Japanese movies, I was thrilled when I happened to fall across "Sadako 3D" by sheer luck. Preparing for a good old fashioned Japanese scarefest, I settled in on the couch to watch "Sadako 3D".And now that the end credits have finished, I sit here with a very, very empty feeling and a rather bad taste in my mouth. This movie was quite far from the original trilogy, both in plot and in scares. Not to mention the 3D effects were not particularly impressive.For a Japanese horror movie then "Sadako 3D" was frightfully lacking spooks and scary moments. And a poorly animated CGI version of Sadako didn't really help the movie along in any great way. Nor did it help when she came out of the well and had strangely mutated legs. Or when there were several of those creatures crawling around. It was just horrible to witness.The acting throughout the movie was adequate, despite the actor and actresses had very little to work with. And Satomi Ishihara (playing Akane) did carry the movie all by herself actually. Without her in the movie, it would have been even more gut-wrenching to sit through.At 96 minutes, you get very little worth for your money. The movie is lacking that tradition dark sense of foreboding doom and horror that usually permeates the Japanese horror movies. "Sadako 3D" was too much of a re-shined attempt to cash in on an otherwise great series and try to brighten it up with 3D effects.Having seen "Sadako 3D", I am somewhat hesitant about sitting down to watch "Sadako 2 3D". Why? Well, aside from the lack of creativity in the title, then from the fear that it will turn out just as dull, lifeless and boring as the first "Sadako" movie was."Sadako 3D" is more of a slap in the face of fans of the original "Ring" movies than it is a well-worthy addition to the legacy.

DEAR readers, I have nothing positive to say about Sadako 3D. It's an insipid horror flick that's as bad as Seram Sejuk, which I reviewed last month.Sadako is the fifth in the series of horror flicks originating from The Ring (1998), in which those who watch a cursed videotape will die, no matter if they saw it on VHS or Beta. Okay, the last part is my judgment.Now, those who watch a cursed videoclip, of someone committing suicide, will themselves commit suicide. Before I continue, I just want to say that Sadako is uninspiring, tame, unoriginal and downright silly.I don't find it scary to see a thin white hand with long fingernails reaching out of a computer towards me. It even gets boring after awhile. All the victims will then shout and scream at the top of their lungs, but to no avail, as they will all commit suicide.The movie starts off slowly, and viewers may be mistaken into thinking that they are watching a documentary. A videoclip of someone committing suicide is making the rounds and everyone wants to watch it; it's as if it's a sex clip of Kim Kardashian.However, those who watch it commit suicide. This goes on for awhile before teacher Akane (Satomi Ishihara) decides to intervene after her student falls from her condo unit. There are also a couple of detectives lurking in the background.Her boyfriend Takanori (Koji Seto) also gets dragged into this mess, that is, dragged into the computer.Sweet Akane, the one with the shrieky voice that can break glass, which happens in this flick, goes underground to save her lover, but not before she runs around in an empty warehouse avoiding an army of gargantuan and ugly-looking hairy spiders. They may look dangerous but all our heroine has to do to destroy them is to give them a hard whack and they'll disintegrate into smithereens. Finally, what's this flick without long and dishevelled hair smothering our hero?After this movie is over, viewers will want to seriously consider committing suicide.

The original "Ring" film is a horror movie classic. Its central character is Sadako, a girl in a white dress with very long black hair who climbed out of a well and into the living rooms of her victims through the TV. The creepy way Sadako's disheveled tresses covered her face and the jerky way she would creep and walk were copied shamelessly in several other Asian horror flicks, even several years afterwards. When I first saw the ads of this film, it was pretty exciting. This movie promised to bring Sadako in all her 3D glory, and I could not wait to see her crawl right through the silver screen right at us. However, when I got to the theater earlier, it turned out that locally, it would only be shown in Digital 2D. In fact, it had been re-titled "The Ring 3." Groan.Anyway, "The Ring 3" is about Akane, a young teacher in a Catholic girls school. One of her students gets obsessed in searching the internet for a certain "cursed suicide video" which rumors say allegedly showed someone committing suicide, and resulted in the viewer in getting killed as well. That cheerful student unexpectedly commits suicide one night by jumping through a glass window and falling to her death. More and more people inexplicably take their lives. When Akane's own boyfriend Takanori gets lassoed into a giant advertising LCD screen, she was hooked into a search for the truth behind this cursed online video and find a way to stop its deadly consequences.First, the positives. Akane is played by a very pretty young actress named Satomi Ishihara. She really pulled off the sympathetic character of the tormented teacher. She is very charming and great to look at amidst the horror, and despite the weird "super power" the writer gave her. There was also a little puppy love flashback episode to show how Akane and Takanori first became friends. That was a nice touch.There is really something so clean about Japanese cinematography. The contrasts are so stark and simple, they look beautiful. Those scenes where Akane was simply walking under the arches of a lonely corridor, or when she was walking on the rooftop against the bright blue sky. So nice and calm. Next, the negatives.While the first Ring films successfully conveyed dread and fear with the simple and even crude special effects of Sadako creeping towards her prey. This film goes OVERBOARD with its ridiculously unbridled use of excessive fake-looking computer-generated imagery! Despite this supposedly advanced computer graphics, the parts that were supposed to be 3D, like the hand or the hair that "popped" out of the computer or cellphone monitor, looked very bad indeed. The most absurd and over-the-top idea of them all is the terrible idea of transforming the iconic scary image of a lone Sadako into a HORDE of monstrous spider-like Sadakos with very long jointed hind legs and vampire-bat-like mouths. The ironic kicker here is that, they apparently can be easily subdued by sweet little Akane, after which they simply dissolve into a swarm of black moths! Senseless and stupid. Certainly, less is more.Overall, this is a disappointing movie, undeserving of being called a sequel of the original Ring films. I am giving it a couple of extra stars solely because of the beauty and performance of Ms. Satomi Ishihara as Akane. As for the character that gave this movie its name, Sadako, sadly lost her edge and practically became a caricature of her original self because of this film's indulgent director.