Sadako (film)

Summarize Fact Check

Believing her daughter to be a reincarnation of Sadako Yamamura, clairvoyant Hatsuko Sofue locks her in a closet and prepares to set it on fire. Meanwhile, Sadako's ghost breaks free from a cave in Oshima Island and appears in Hatsuko's apartment. Sadako possesses the girl into setting the apartment on fire via telekinesis, killing five people, including her mother.

One month later at Kurokawa Memorial General Hospital, clinical psychologist Dr. Mayu Akikawa examines her patient, Ms. Kurahashi, who is abnormally obsessed with her. Mayu meets the girl after she fainted from seeing the ghost of a woman who committed suicide. She also learns that the girl was birthed and raised by Hatsuko in secret and that her real name is unknown, only being referred to as Sadako. Mayu's dropout brother Kazuma tries to recover his popularity as a YouTuber with the help of web marketing consultant Yusuke Ishida. Ishida recommends recording a frightening urban experience, prompting Kazuma to visit Hatsuko's apartment.

Meanwhile, the girl telekinetically attacks several children after being teased by them. She escapes to an elevator but faints after seeing the ghost of an old man. Mayu consoles her and learns about her abusive background. The girl later faints after she sees Sadako's ghost on a nearby TV. Ishida informs Mayu about Kazuma's disappearance after he visited Hatsuko's apartment. Mayu watches Kazuma's final YouTube video, where Kazuma runs away from Sadako's ghost in the apartment. The video also contains subliminal images of skulls underwater, which intermittently appears in other unrelated videos watched by Kazuma's followers.

Mayu is later attacked by Kurahashi after she refuses to reciprocate her feelings for her. The girl saves Mayu but Sadako's ghost manifests on a nearby TV and crawls out of it. She forcefully grabs Mayu's arm and traumatizes Kurahashi. The girl also falls into a coma. Mayu learns about Sadako's identity and asks Kurahashi to reveal more information; Sadako was born with deadly powers and after her father murdered her to suppress her powers, her ghost created a curse that killed several people. These victims included Kurahashi's friends, with Kurahashi being revealed to be Masami. Kurahashi informs Mayu that Kazuma is cursed and cannot be saved. That night, Sadako kills Kurahashi. Whilst watching another video of Kazuma's, Mayu sees more subliminal images, including those of a cave, a baby reflected in an eye, bodies rising from the water, a woman falling to her death off a cliff, submerged skulls, and her brother.

Ishida, who also saw these subliminal images, deduces that Sadako was born in Oshima Island and he and Mayu head there to save Kazuma. They visit the cave, which was visited by priests who practiced abstinence before the cave was closed due to a cave-in. The cave was also host to a shrine where parents would kill their unwanted children. Sadako was one of the potential victims as an infant but she survived, causing her to gain her powers. To maintain her powers, Sadako fed on the souls of unwanted children, with the girl being her latest victim. A hand pulls Mayu into the cave's pool, where she sees the disembodied spirit of the girl. The ghosts of the murdered children try to drown her but Mayu saves her, which also causes the girl to recover from her coma. Sadako attacks Mayu but Kazuma, who hid in the cave due to fear, emerges and allows Sadako to kill him instead.

The following day, Mayu barricades herself from Sadako using privacy curtains. The girl visits her and thanks her for saving her life. Suddenly, Sadako removes the curtains and kills Mayu.

• Elaiza Ikeda as Dr. Mayu Akikawa
• Himeka Himejima as Girl / Sadako Yamamura
• Renn Kiriyama as Minoru Fujii
• Hiroya Shimizu as Kazuma Akikawa
• Rie Tomosaka as Hatsuko Sofue
• Takashi Tsukamoto as Yusuke Ishida
• Hitomi Sato as Masami Kurahashi
• Ayaka Minami as Sadako Yamamura

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has an approval rating of 23% based on 26 reviews, with an average rating of 5/10.^[8] The website's critics' consensus reads: "Sadako sees a once-terrifying franchise staggering limply to the finish with a rote final chapter that rehashes previous chapters to diminishing returns".^[8]

James Marsh of the South China Morning Post gave the film a score of two-and-a-half out of five stars, writing that the film's "balance between the old world and new media is awkward and only intermittently successful, but nevertheless drags this lurching, wayward franchise back in the right direction".^[2] Alexandra Heller-Nicholas, writing for the Alliance of Women Film Journalists, commended the film for its exploration of "the deeper, richer psychological terrain which was always in the series", writing positively of its "broad disinterest in continuing rehashing the now thoroughly overcooked cliché of the cursed video as the central narrative core of the film".^[9]

Conversely, Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting lamented that the film "presents a wide open world of unexplored possibilities", and concluded that "despite a premise that suggests an attempt to modernize this franchise, nothing has changed at all. What once made Sadako so terrifying [...] has now become far too familiar and ineffective".^[10] Polygon's Joelle Monique wrote that the film "[loses] several of the key elements that made the original films terrifying and thrilling"; she criticized the ways in which the film deviates from the franchise's established lore, and negatively characterized the film as having "the lowest body count in Ringu franchise history".^[11] Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com noted the film as having "sporadic lukewarm scares" and wrote: "Sadako is far too touch-and-go with its chilling potential, all despite the promise from its creepy young lead (Himeka Himejima) [...] there are so many story pieces that don't build to grandiosity, so much as drag viewers to an underwhelming climax".^[12]

• List of ghost films