A crossover we've all been "dying" to see
This week, I decided to travel overseas for a different type of horror, specifically Japanese Horror. There is something about Asian cinema, and how they often are able to make better horror then Hollywood, without the Hollywood budget. It probably helps that in many Asian cultures there are lots of scary stories and myths to draw inspiration from. For this review, I decided to review Japan's most iconic horror icon. Though there is a slight problem, there are two of them, Sadako from The Ring and Kayako the vengeful ghost from Ju-on: The Grudge. I knew I could only pick one, and after thinking it through, I decided, "Why not both?". Thus today we are reviewing the 2016 crossover movie, Sadako vs Kayako, a movie which pitches both ghouls against each other in a battle over two young women's souls.
The movie was originally teased back in 2015 as an April Fools Joke, though later that year it was revealed to be an actual production. I'm going to be honest right now, the promotion and build-up to the movie was much more better then the actual film. You may ask, "How does Japan promote a battle of their two most iconic cinematic ghouls", well how ever Japan promotes anything, with tons of wackiness and charm! From simple goofy clips of the two demonstrating good theater manners, and a opening pitch at a baseball game to a Hello Kitty collaboration (btw if anyone gets me the Sadako HK plushy i'll love you forever, no joke). Unfortunately all of this would lead to a disappointing ending as i'll talk about soon enough.
Despite these characters being so iconic, they surprisingly aren't that well known in the west, other then those pretty bad western remakes of their films. Just in case some of you here don't know who these characters are, i'll quickly nutshell their movies of origin. Sadako is from the 1998 movie Ring (or Ringu). The movie centers around a cursed video tape, anyone who watches it receives a call from Sadako who tells her victim that they have seven days to live before she kills them. It is said though that the would-be victim can escape their fate by copying and sharing the video, thus creating a endless cycle. This technique doesn't work all the time though, it depends on which of The Ring movies you watch.
Now unlike Sadako, Kayako and the small ghost boy Toshio have a bit more backstory to them. In the 2002 film, Ju-On: The Grudge, the ghost's backstory's are that Kayako's husband finds out that she loves another man. Filled with rage her husband proceeded to murder her, his son, Toshio and the family cat, Mar, before finally hanging himself. The mother and son come back as the Japanese ghosts known as Onryō, which literally means "vengeful spirit". Their house is cursed, making anyone who walks inside cursed. How the curse works is that, as soon as you are cursed, the ghosts will hunt you down and kill you, and if you die outside the house, the curse will spread to wherever you died (Yikes, talk about overpowered). It is also said that the souls of Toshio and Mar fused together which is why the boy meows much rather then make more human sounds.
We should all be caught up now, so we can finally start talking about the main event, Sadako vs Kayako. The movie begins with an unfortunate social worker who had been sent to check up on a middle-aged woman since no one had seen her in awhile.After walking around a little, she finally comes across the corpse of the woman who seemed to had stuck a large shard of glass into her throat. The social worker watches in horror as an unsuspecting VHS player starts playing, playing the infamous cursed video. The audience, doesn't see the video, but instead sees Sadako stalking her new victim in the background before we cut to a university. In one of the rooms we get our obligatory foreshadowing class lesson, in which a professor is teaching a bored class about different urban legends, such as the cursed video and the cursed house. The movie even throws in a small easter egg mentioning "The Slit Mouthed Woman" as seen in the 2007 movie Carved, which was directed and written by Kōji Shiraishi, who also wrote and directed Sadako vs Kayako. During the lecture the professor, Shin'ichi Morishige mentions that if any of his students find the cursed video, they should bring it to him, and he'll pay them in return, of course no one believes him however. After doing a quick promotion of his self published book that goes into detail about the cursed video, he dismisses the class. The film cuts to our main protagonist Yūri Kurahashi, and her friend Natsumi Ueno, Natsumi and Yūri are discussing whatever when the peppy friend asks Yūri a favor, help her transfer the videotape of her parent's wedding onto DVD so she can give it to them as a anniversary gift. First though the girls go to a thrift shop to find a VCR, Yūri stumbles upon a old, dirty device, but with it being so cheap she decides to go with that one, although they forgot to check to see if there was anything inside of it first. Upon arriving back to Yūri's apartment, the girls set up the VCR only to find a decrepit old tape inside, being a thrill seeker Yūri decides to watch it despite Natsumi's protests. Yūri is fortunately distracted by a text message which she takes her time to reply to, thus missing out on the video. Natsumi isn't as lucky, she didn't get distracted and watched the cursed video in it's entirety, thus cursing her to a untimely demise. Natsumi quickly takes the video out, and tells Yūri that this may be the cursed video. The girl's fears are confirmed when Natsumi receives an ominous phone call, warning her of her final two days. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention, they shortened the curse down to two days instead of seven, i'm not too sure why, maybe to make events line up easier?
The girls make their way to the shop where they bought the VCR, only to arrive too late as they come across the distraught shop owners whose part-timer just committed suicide after telling them that she had watched that same video two days ago. We see here that Sadako's method of killing isn't as direct, instead making her victims commit suicide. Upon remembering their professor, the girls go to him to ask him for help. The movie from time to time cuts to this other girl who lives on the other side of town, Sishuka Takagi, who recently moved into a house that is coincidentally right next to Kayako's house, this can only mean disastrous things are to come indeed. Unfortunately we don't see or learn much about about Sishuka until towards the climax of the movie. Our main girls find their professor and tell him about the videotape they found. Excited to finally have his chance to meet the mysterious Sadako, he watches the video himself as well as prepares to copy it to a DVD format, which sounds like a bad idea waiting to happen. Yūri frantic for answers reads through the professor's book, and finds a page on different ways to rid yourself of the curse, such as showing it to someone else. Morishige tells the girls that unfortunately it didn't work since Yūri gave him the video to watch and not Natsumi. Wanting to at least rid of Natsumi of the curse, he takes her to a renowned local exorcist, in hopes that she can break the curse. Things don't work out to plan however as Sadako is a very strong ghost who is willing to kill anyone who gets in the way of her curse. Sadako possesses the exorcist and the exorcist's assistants, making them kill each other, then Morishige as he tries to save the exorcist. Arriving late is a more experienced exorcist with psychic powers, Keizo Tokiwa, who is accompanied by a young blind girl dressed in red, named Tamao, who is also psychic, it is never revealed how the two are related however which is a bit of a shame. A little before the exorcism scene, but after the scene where the professor watches the video we finally get to see Kayako in action, or more Toshio actually, but whatever. A group of young boys bully another child into going into the cursed house. The poor boy isn't killed off immediately however, Toshio instead approaches him before cutting to the young boy still alive, he opens the door just enough to throw a large rock at his bullies which makes them run in after him to take revenge. One by one, the boys get picked off, until the last bully remains, we see in a POV shot of the innocent boy hiding in a closet, watching as his bully gets closer to his hiding space, only for Toshio to pounce on top of him, killing him. Luckily we don't see the ghosts actually killing the children directly, instead the ghosts grab them and they simply disappear, I don't know why, but seeing kids in peril always makes me a bit uncomfortable, especially if it's heavily implied they were killed (I was stupid for thinking that the nice boy and Toshio would somehow become friends haha).
Focusing back on the Sadako plot, a depressed Natsumi blames Yūri understandably as she was the one who insisted they watch the suspicious tape in the first place. Feeling guilty Yūri decides to watch the video for Natsumi hoping that the curse will pass on to her instead. However, Natsumi makes the stupid decision after seeing Yūri hop into the shower, she watches the video again, cursing her once more. To make matters worse Natsumi even posts the video onto the internet, dooming thousands worldwide (Pretty sure Rings (2017) stole this plot point). Yūri then meets Keizo and his assistant who tell her that her efforts were in vain as sharing the video is simply a rumor that doesn't actually work, so she just cursed herself for nothing. Keizo then goes on to explain that the only way to defeat Sadako is to pit her against an equally powerful curse in hope that they cancel each other out, the exorcist leaves to find such a ghost to pit against Sadako. Soon after this Yūri finds out what Natsumi had done, and now Natsumi locks herself in a separate room where she attempts to kill herself before the curse can. Unfortunately for her, killing yourself falls under interfering with the curse causing Sadako to pay Natsumi a earlier visit then planned, and kills her by filling her lungs with her hair. Having seen her best friend died in front of her Yūri is now determined to stop the curse once and for all at any cost. Keizo, and Tamao come across the home of Kayako, and see Sishuka walking home from school. Tamao warns that the house beckons to her and that if she wants to live, she needs to stay away from there. With both Keizo and Tamao sensing the dark presence in the house, they choose Kayako as their target, and begin prepping for their plan. Later that night after being taunted by nightmares, Sishuka decides to explore the house in search of the missing boys. She comes across the nice boy, only for it to be actually Toshio. Seeing the ghoulish child, Sishuka screams which causes her parents to wake up and rush over to the cursed house in a attempt to save their daughter; everything that could go wrong, goes wrong. First Sishuka's father's head is snapped by Toshio, then her mother is mauled by Kayako, before Kayako can get to Sishuka, she is saved by Keizo, though now cursed there is hope for her.
Yūri is introduced to Sishuka, and convinces the terrified girl to help them, saying, "Our curses will fight each other", ah yeah, we know where this is heading. The two girls enter the cursed house, find a old TV with a VCR and Yūri has Sishuka watch the cursed video, so now both girls have both curses on them. Toshio then appears, doing his creepy ghost cat child thing, but is dragged into the television before Sadako crawls out towards the girls, Kayako is also heard coming down the staircase. The two begin their heavily anticipated battle, only for the humans to find out that they are as equally powerful as each other. Keizo distracts the ghosts, which allows the girls to head outside towards a well that Keizo and Tamao prepared as a last ditch effort to at least seal them. Yūri prepares herself to be sacrificed to seal the two ghosts, though once Sadako and Kayako clash, the two fuse into a gross monstrosity and Keizo is killed. Sishuka pulls the cover over the well, thinking that's all over, though the cover is pushed off. It's revealed that the two demonic ghouls had fused, using Yūri's body as a host, they become Sadakaya. Sadakaya has the appearance of Sadako, but with the ominous croaking and jerky movements of Kayako. Sishuka and Tamao scream in terror as behind them Toshio is back doing that creepy waggly tongue thing he does sometimes, the girl's fates are open to interpretation though it is most likely that they had died. That was the ending of Sadako vs Kayako, though there wasn't much battling sadly. At least at the end of the credits we get a new version of the cursed video featuring the new Sadakaya.
Overall, I thought the movie was okay, at the very least, it's a decent Ring film. I feel like the movie spends too much time on The Ring plot and just shoehorns in The Grudge at the ending. Then we didn't even get to see a fight, which is rather disappointing, though the fusion part is kinda cool. If you want a Japanese horror and only care about the scares, then I recommend this. Though if you want a horror icon battle, I instead suggest Freddy vs Jason which is what I was expecting Sadako vs Kayako to be more like. It's okay, not the best, though it is much better then any of the American remakes from either franchise ironically enough. In the end the long awaited duel between Japan's iconic silver screen ghouls gets a 3 out of 5 paws up.
No comments:
Post a Comment