El Aro 4: El Despertar

The Ring and Ju-On (The Grudge) are two of my favourite Japanese horror franchises. I'm kinda sad that both Hoga and Hollywood neglecting both of these franchises and I'm here waiting for more sequels, reboots, remakes and spin-offs.

This latest installment is science focused with unnecessary humor, sudden loud noises that was annoying af and also a sequel to Spiral (1998). I loved the production quality, cast (except Kazuma Kawamura, his clumsy nonsense was irritating and one of the worst parts of this movie) and the familiar feel. But unfortunately the overall quality was quite disappointing.

"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.

Opinion of someone who follow the Ringu series (books and movies): This is an original story, as the last adaptation of the last book was Sadako - Final Chapter (2019).

For me who saw all the films and read the first 3 books, Sadako DX started out quite interesting, the part of the video of Sadako coming out of the well and getting close to those who are watching is phenomenal and could give a new boost to the franchise, but then it was just a bit of a mess.

The story does not follow any rules established in the books or in the previous films. I understand that the slightly funny parts were an attempt at comic relief, but they missed the mark.

Whoever wrote this script and who approved it should go back to film school. And whoever left the cinema in the middle of the film in anger, left with good reason.

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.