Fantasia 2019: Sadako and Stare Film Reviews
By: Joseph Perry
Japanese horror films involving long-haired ghosts bringing terror and death came to modern international prominence after the release of director Hideo Nakata’s Ringu (1998). Many viewers outside of Japan saw the film for the first time as second-generation or worse videotape dubs, adding to the eerie sense of the story about a ghost named Sadako who crawled out of television sets to claim the lives of her cursed victims. Ringu launched a franchise, and other films and franchises, such as Ju-0n: The Grudge (2002), along with international remakes in markets such as the United States and South Korea.
With the many changes in technology and audience tastes since 1998, the Ringu franchise has fallen in recent years to disappointing outings such as Sadako vs. Kayako (2016), the latter being one of the main ghosts from the Ju-on series. With the new film Sadako, Nakata returns to try and breathe new life into the franchise, basically attempting to reboot it for a new, youthful, tech-savvy generation.
Sadako concerns a mysterious little nameless girl (Himeka Himejima) with telekinetic powers whose mother tried to burn her to death in a murder suicide. The girl survived and is hospitalized and put under the care of new staff psychologist Mayu Akikawa (Elaiza Ikeda). Meanwhile Mayu’s underachieving brother and sole living family member, Kazuma (Hiroya Shimizu), has dropped out of game design school in an attempt to become a social media sensation. As cinematic circumstances would have it, Mayu, the girl, and Kazuma become linked together when the latter goes missing after unwisely filming a spooky video at the girl’s burned-out apartment remains, unwittingly capturing frames of Sadako and an eerie setting with human remains that Mayu discovers while watching the video.
Legendary director Nakata, working from a screenplay by Noriaki Sugihara (who had a stab at the franchise before with Sadako 2 3D), does a fine job of creating an eerie new setting in which Sadako eternally dwells. The iconic well is now gone, replaced by a seaside cave haunted by the lost souls of unwanted children left to die there. The film also updates the former use of videotapes and VHS players for Sadako’s ways to curse unsuspecting viewers with online videos. Though the examination of how far people will go to become social media sensations, and the horrors that may await them for their vanity, may be a necessary update for the franchise, the idea also joins an already crowded fright fest subgenre that looks set to rival zombie movies in wearing out its welcome.
Ringu is an iconic Japanese horror film that provided generally scary moments, but 20 years after its release, audiences have become accustomed to the tropes of movies about long-haired ghosts, so the best that viewers can realistically hope for is creepiness, rather than scariness. Sadako and Nakata deliver in that department, with Kazuma’s tour through the charred remains of the apartment and the film’s climax at the cave being two stand-out set pieces.
There’s enough mystery surrounding the girl and suspense in following clues to keep things interesting, and the solid performances by Ikeda and Himejima provide sufficient reason to stay invested in their characters. Nakata’s attempt to update the Ringu franchise doesn’t offer many surprises, but it is a well-helmed chiller that deserves a watch.
A somewhat misguided attempt to introduce a new long-haired ghost character involving curses is Stare, director Hirotaka Adachi’s directing debut after writing for the Ultraman R/B television series (2018). The technical aspects of the film including direction and cinematography are generally fine, and the acting is good, but the film falters because it adds nothing new to the tried-and-true tropes of what made J-horror so hot two decades ago.
Mizuki (Marie Iitoyo) is a young woman who witnesses her friend die in a restaurant because of her eyes exploding from her head. Haruo (Yu Inaba) is a similarly aged man whose brother dies in the same fashion. When the two survivors meet upon learning that the deceased pair knew each other, they embark on a journey to solve the mystery. Like so many J-horror film plots before, this one involves the spreading of an urban legend, and this time, people only need hear the name of the spirit to seal their fates.
The entity in question is Shirai-san, a large-eyed ghost with the classic red rictus grin. Unkempt hair obscures her face, and a certain sound cue heralds her appearances.
Though Stare often promises to deliver new aspects to the subgenre, it almost as often falls back on familiarity. Hindering it further is a drawn-out angle of awkward-romance drama between Mizuki and Haruo. Though slightly gorier than its predecessors, the film doesn’t do much else to re-enliven or update the style of J-horror classics that it painstakingly follows. I recommend Stare mostly for purists of the subgenre and curious foreign horror film buffs.
Sadako and Stare screen at Fantasia 2019, taking place in Montreal from July 11-August 1.
Joseph Perry is one of the hosts of When It Was Cool’s exclusive Uphill Both Ways podcast (whenitwascool.com/up-hill-both-ways-podcast/) and Gruesome Magazine’s Decades of Horror: The Classic Era podcast (decadesofhorror.com/category/classicera/). He also writes for the retro pop culture website That’s Not Current (thatsnotcurrent.com), and film websites Diabolique Magazine (diaboliquemagazine.com), Gruesome Magazine (gruesomemagazine.com), The Scariest Things (scariesthings.com), Ghastly Grinning (ghastlygrinning.com), and film magazines Phantom of the Movies’ VideoScope (videoscopemag.com) and Drive-In Asylum (etsy.com/shop/GroovyDoom).
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