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 The curse that was featured in earlier Ring movies goes back to the 1950s. They tell you that the "secrets surrounding
the evolution of the curse are about to be revealed." There is a demonstration
of psychic power by Yananura Shizuko and all the journalists at that event end
up dead. The fiance of one of the dead guys "is determined to find whoever, or
whatever, is responsible and take her revenge." They claim that this is the
final part of the Ring series and that it "sheds new light over the chilling tale of an ancient, fatal
curse." 2000, 98 minutes, Widescreen, DVD
Pity poor Sadako. After all her crazy misadventures as a vengeful
psychic/ghost or whatever she was and is (chronicled with varying degrees of
success in The Ring and The Ring 2 ) who would have ever guessed that her double-secret origin story wouldn't
resemble a really scary or twisted horror tale so much as an episode of My So-Called Life? To be sure, Ring fans will likely find something to like about
this movie. There are pictures of people with deformed faces, that disconcerting
music, and of course the requisite shots of that well that figures so
prominently in these stories. In fact, you even get two Sadakos for the price
of one in this offering, but more on that Evil Dead Trap inspired flatulence
later. It goes without saying that that whole bit is idiotic, but the real
crime here is that it turns out that Sadako's origin isn't all that
interesting, at least unless you're one of those teenage girls whose biggest
crises in life is whether the really cool guy who runs the lights on the
school
play likes you or not. How can this be you ask? How can the creepiest monster
of the last few years turn out to be merely some chick that wants to be in the
school play and be accepted by everyone? Beats me, but they went ahead and did
it. Is there anyone else around here that thinks the idea that the socially
reclusive Sadako would decide that her calling is to be an actress in a play is
less than believable?
That's okay, because the movie is a bit fuzzy when it comes to the rest of the
details of the story anyhow (isn't it lucky for the plot that everyone else in
Sadako's acting troupe immediately assumes that the recent spate of deaths at
the theatre is the result of her psychic powers getting out of hand?). This
prequel to the other movies takes place thirty years before those events and
follows a nosy reporter as she tries to uncover the truth about the daughter of
the notorious psychic Shizuko. Shizuko gained fame awhile before all this with
her demonstration of mental prowess before a bunch of disbelieving and
soon-to-be-dead reporters. That incident was covered in some detail in one of
the two
prior films, so you deal with the aftermath and what happened to her
daughter when she went and got all growed up in this one.  This woman reporter starts sticking her nose into Sadako's bees wax and you
don't feel a bit sorry for her when she meets her inevitable end. I mean, you
knew what the mother did so why would you go and poke sticks at the daughter
who is much younger (I think we all know that this means her psychic powers
are more apt to be under less control than her mommy's were). This is really
Sadako's movie, whereas the other movies were about nosy reporters, so you
don't develop any attachment to this woman or her fate. In fact, she appears
in the movie sporadically until the last third when she shows up to kickstart
the
plot beyond all that high school play crap. Every so often she tries to talk to
people and gather clues about what Sadako is up to and she's usually met with
the cold shoulder, but does get an occasional flashback to help fill in the
blanks. For her part, Sadako is a reserved young gal with long "I'm a
psycho-chick-loner" hair that sometimes covers her face when she needs to be
really
scary. She's gone and joined an acting group, perhaps for therapeutic reasons,
perhaps because the writer was to lazy to come up with anything interesting
(didn't you look at Sadako in the first two movies and think to yourself, "you
know, she looks like someone that was probably interested acting in her
pre-vengeful spirit life). The whole theatre setting seems a bit familiar for
a horror movie, but maybe I'm just tired of all those Dario Argento movies
about the opera. I would add that the whole theatre angle in this movie was
not handled in a fresh or exciting manner. You've got the lead actress that
croaks (Whoops, how did that happen? Guess who'll have to fill in!), the horny
director that wants to pump the understudy (she's kind of quiet, has this real
long scary hair...) and the lightboard guy that falls in love with Sadako (does
he, you know, like-like me?).
Now, I was one of those cool kids in high school that most of you probably
loathed so I was never within a country mile of a school play, but I knew some
of those guys that ran the lightboard (well, I knew of them, obviously I wasn't
friends with those losers!) and they were about as likely to get lucky with a
woman as they were to get all the experience points they needed to level up
their paladin during a single AD&D campaign.  At some point during the rehearsals, there is a bit of a problem and some
strange sounds are coming out from a tape that being played and the next thing
you know there is one dead lead actress and everyone is talking about how she
would have wanted them to forget her death and just go on with the show,
preferably with the crazy broad that was responsible for her death playing the
part that was originally hers (If I was the dead dude, I would want everyone to
close the show and lose their jobs). Sadako is not terribly popular with the
rest of the cast and the reasons are as murky as everything else about this
movie. She sits around looking like a mental patient and everyone just assumes
that she must have all these psychic powers that can kill everyone rather than
the fact that she may just be a confused and socially mal-adjusted young woman
like most actresses are. Meanwhile, she has developed this crush on Toyama,
the guy who does the lights and eventually he warms up to her, especially when
he overhears the play's director threatening her. I'm not real sure what he
was up to, but guys like that threaten their young ingenues with exposure of
their psychic powers only when they want to them to star in the play that is
being rehearsed in their pants. I understand a guy trying to get himself a
little action. That's why most people get into directing, but I'm not so sure
about threatening someone who has psychic powers to get that action. Sadako
seems oblivious to this guy's obvious charms so he tries to pull one of those
Orenthal situations on her and it's Toyama to the rescue. These guys lock up
with one another backstage and Toyama gets himself smacked upside the head with
a candlestick and the director gets his head bashed in by Toyama when he falls
on something. Seeing that he's killed the director and knowing that the
director would have wanted everyone to hide his corpse behind some scenery and
go on with the show, Toyama drags the body to some out-of-the-way part of the
stage
and leaves it. He ends up at the hospital with his head wound, but Sadako's
touch seems to have pretty much fixed it. While she was there she also managed
to heal another guy so that he could walk again. Thanks for pitching in
Sadako! Now what can you do with this script? It's a Code Blue and there's a
do not resuscitate order on the back of the DVD box! 
With the lead actress dead and the director missing, it's opening night and the
audience turns out in droves to be part of what promises to be as big a fiasco
as the idea of any further entries in this film series. I was never sure just
what play Sadako and her posse were putting on, but it did involve a lot of
candles and her wearing one of those Michael Crawford style Phantom of the
Opera masks. The nosy reporter reappears prior to the performance and hands
off some secret tapes to the ex-girlfriend of Toyama. The ex goes up to the
booth and tells Toyama that she'll take over with the audio cues because he's
needed elsewhere. She then plays the tapes the reporter gave her. It turns
out that these were not audio recordings of Billy Graham revealing himself to
be a bigoted slug (I'm sure Tricky Dick just goaded him into being an
anti-Semite), but were in fact recordings of the big psychic pay-per-view that
Sadako's mom Shizuko held years ago (you know - the one where everyone said
she was a fake and ended up punked real bad). This causes problems during the
show and lead to things such as the lights blinking (got to expect that I
suppose), Shizuko appearing on stage to taunt her daughter (thanks for coming
out tonight!) and the entire cast and crew chasing Sadako down and clubbing her
to death (Encore! Encore!). Having dumped his girlfriend and put all his eggs
in the Sadako basket, Toyama is bit bummed out when they hold him back and
prevent him from saving Sadako, but at least he got to watch his loved one get
pummeled
to death. How many of us even get that? The reporter shows up (great idea
giving those tapes to the jilted lover) and says that it isn't over. Somehow
or other she has figured out that there is another Sadako and that her daddy,
Dr. Ikuma is probably holding her at his trailer outside of town. Everyone
hops into the theatre van (including Toyama and Sadako's busted up corpse!) and
they boogie on down to see Ikuma. Ikuma knows they are there to kill Sadako
and tells the strangely insipid tale of how there was one Sadako and then they
split in two. One took after her mother and the other took after her real dad,
whomever he was (her biological didn't bother, to quote Shaq). Dr. Ikuma gave
one of the Sadakos drugs to keep her from growing. At this point, I started to
get the joke. There never was any reason behind any of this Sadako stuff. It
was all being made up as they went along! It's so much funnier when you
realize that the pointless complications and nonsensical revelations are
intentional. Good times. Good times. Those of you that saw the first two flicks know (and at this point are probably
only watching because) this movie has to end with Sadako getting her bony
behind dumped down a well. It does happen (thanks dad), but only after Sadako
comes alive again, kills off everyone, and gets drugged and hacked with a
machete a couple of times by her foster father (dang it man, the government
won't pay you that monthly stipend for raising her if she's laid out in the
bottom of a well with two giant gashes in her head!). What about the second
Sadako? Beats me, I think we saw her once. Maybe it was all symbolic, but
since the rest of the movie was alternately unremarkable and muddled I didn't
bother to try and puzzle out any deeper meaning. Having enjoyed the first two
films (the first one a lot, the second less so), I was hoping this one would,
if nothing else give us some background on the character of Sadako and at least
deepen our understanding of the other movies. We didn't learn anything about
her in this movie that added to what she was and why she does the things she
does, that we didn't know at least intuitively from the other movies. She's a
psychic with a lot of power that she can't control and was dumped in a well to
damper her powers. You could figure that out from the first two flicks and
this flick doesn't flesh those details out in the slightest. The theatre stuff
doesn't work at all and the actions of her fellow actors make no sense. Why do
they all beat her death? Because some reporter says there is a curse on them?
Because one of their own was killed? Why would you think Sadako did it? Then
why do you all go out to Ikuma's house looking for another Sadako? How does
the reporter know that? Why does Sadako come back to life? The proximity of
her other self? Why are there two of her? What happened to the other one?
Why did Ikuma let one go out into the world? Who was her father? I think
they've managed to do two incredible things in this movie: they've been able to
simultaneously confuse things even more than they already were and at the
same time they've gone and made the story a lot
less interesting than it started out being in the first two flicks. It would
have been so much more interesting to focus on this bizarre family unit of
Shizuko, Sadako (both of them) and Ikuma than to see Sadako doing some
Japanese version of Carrieor something. I don't expect that fans of the other movies will be dissuaded
from seeing this film, but those who haven't seen any of them should start with
the original. By the time you make it to this movie, you'll merely be let
down, instead of turned off by of the whole series had you started with it. An
unimaginative and very disappointing affair, leaving the viewer to to wonder
how something as creepy as the first movie could have degenerated into such
banal psychic dreck.
Reviews © 2004
MonsterHunter
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