There’s a special kind of disappointment reserved for when the creator of a legendary horror icon returns… and delivers what feels like a YouTube fan edit with a hospital budget and a ghost that’s doing more brand maintenance than actual killing.
Sadako (2019) is Hideo Nakata coming back to the Ring franchise, and instead of a terrifying reinvention, we get: Sadako vs. social media, Sadako vs. child welfare, Sadako vs. attention span. It’s like the series looked at modern horror trends—creepy kids, viral videos, legacy lore—and said, “Yes. All of that. At once. And worse.”
Sadako: Now With Extra Lore, Less Scary
We open with a clairvoyant mother, Hatsuko, who has padlocked her daughter in a closet because she believes the kid is Sadako reincarnated. And, in this universe, locking potential ghost children in closets seems to be standard operating procedure, not child abuse.
Hatsuko is about to burn the kid alive—parent of the year—when actual Sadako escapes from a cave on Oshima Island, pops into the apartment, and things immediately go up in flames. Five people die. Hatsuko’s daughter survives. The audience, regrettably, does too.
Enter Dr. Mayu Akikawa, a clinical psychologist at Kurokawa Memorial General Hospital. She’s supposed to be our grounded, rational protagonist. Instead, she spends most of the movie fainting, staring at screens, and running around like a well-dressed exposition sponge.
The little girl with no official identity gets brought into the hospital. She says her mother called her “Sadako,” which is… subtle. She also starts telekinetically flinging toys around and collapsing from ghost visions, which in any sane world would result in national-level scientific interest. Here, it mostly results in “put her in a bed and wait until the plot needs her again.”
Meanwhile, on HellTube
Mayu has a dropout brother, Kazuma, who is trying to become a YouTuber. Yes, really. Sadako has gone from cursed VHS to broadband-era cringe content.
Kazuma is advised by his consultant, Ishida, to do “scary urban exploration” to boost his dwindling views. So he goes to—where else—the burned-out apartment where Hatsuko tried to roast her daughter and records the cursed closet.
Inside, we see talismans, creepy atmosphere, classic don’t-open-this vibes. Kazuma still opens it. He manages to capture Sadako on camera before running away, as if he hasn’t seen Ring or read a single internet creepypasta.
Soon after, Kazuma disappears, because if there’s one thing Sadako respects, it’s intellectual property. You film her, you die.
Hospital Horror, But Mostly Paperwork
Back at the hospital, Sadako’s influence is spreading like a low-budget virus.
The little girl is teased by another child, so she uses telekinesis to launch a rolling cart at her. She collapses, has visions, and repeatedly passes out like her main superpower is narrative convenience.
Mayu keeps seeing weird things:
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Sadako on TV screens
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Ghostly women in hallways
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A cursed well playing on lobby televisions like the worst daytime programming ever
There’s a whole scene where Sadako crawls out of a TV in the hospital lobby and attacks Kurahashi, another patient, while Mayu faints. Again. At this point, you start to wonder if the real curse is low blood sugar.
Kurahashi, by the way, is the one who conveniently info-dumps Sadako’s entire origin story at Mayu later: Shizuko, psychic mom, abusive dad, well, curse, psychic murder, yada yada. It’s like a greatest hits recap for anyone who’s never seen Ring, which is fine, except we’re now 7,000 movies in and we really did not need Wikipedia: The Monologue.
The Tape That Became The Clip That Became The Algorithm
The film says Sadako is still tied to a cursed video, but now it’s vague internet footage instead of a specific tape. There’s no iconic, tightly structured “watch this, you have seven days.” It’s just: watch spooky bootleg well content, suffer random hauntings, eventually die if the movie remembers you exist.
Mayu watches Kazuma’s last video and sees:
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A cave
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A baby reflected in an eye
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Bodies rising from water
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A woman falling
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Skull aesthetics, now in HD
This patchwork of imagery should be disturbing, but it feels more like someone was clicking through stock horror gifs looking for a theme.
Ishida tells Mayu about an old cave on Oshima Island, former shrine for dead priests, now off-limits due to cave-ins. There’s an urban legend about a cursed tape. Mayu connects the dots like the one audience member who’s still trying.
Off to the Island of Exposition
Mayu and Ishida head to Oshima Island to find the Cave of Plot Devices.
There, an old woman casually explains that unwanted babies are abandoned and left to die inside the shrine, and Sadako feeds on their souls. As you do. This could be the basis of an entire horrifying movie. Here, it’s tossed out like a bit of trivia, then we’re back to the poorly lit spelunking.
Mayu starts wondering if she and Kazuma, who grew up as orphans, were spiritually “called” there by Sadako. The movie flirts with that idea, then drifts away from it like everything else.
At night, they go deeper into the cave, because if horror has one rule, it’s “go somewhere dark, alone, and underground where people have already died.”
A ghostly hand pulls Mayu through a rock pile, leaving Ishida stuck outside. Inside, she gets a Sadako origin flashback: Shizuko abandoned Sadako in the cave; Sadako survived, manifested her power, and the curse was born. You would think this would be emotionally seismic. Instead, it feels like someone fast-forwarded through Sadako’s childhood scrapbook.
Sadako, Now with Redemption Arc (?)
Mayu sees the little girl (the maybe-Sadako-reincarnation one) in a vision. Bodies rise from a pool and drag the girl underwater. Mayu hugs her and tells her to fight back. Somewhere back at the hospital, the girl wakes from her coma. Boom: psychic therapy success. Thanks, Dokutā Obvious.
Ishida finally breaks into the cave—took him long enough—and finds Kazuma, who’s just chilling there being cursed and sad. Sadako rises from the water to attack Mayu. Kazuma steps in, lets Sadako drown him instead, and sacrifices himself so his sister can live. It’s supposed to be heartbreaking, but we barely know the guy beyond “loud YouTuber with bad choices.”
Back in the hospital, Mayu recovers. The little girl thanks her. There is a moment where you think, “Okay, so maybe there’s closure. Maybe this is Sadako’s curse evolving into something else. Maybe we’re going somewhere new with this.”
The movie hears that thought and responds with: absolutely not.
The Ending That Sinks Everything
Mayu is about to be discharged, alone in her hospital room, when Sadako just… shows up.
No countdown. No ritual. No build-up. She yanks open the privacy curtain and kills Mayu on the spot.
That’s it.
After all the lore, the rescue, the sacrifice, the cave visions, the reincarnation talk—Sadako just waltzes back in and slaps the “no one lives” sticker on Mayu’s chart. It’s not scary. It’s not tragic. It’s just lazy.
It feels like the movie realized, three minutes before credits, “Oh right, this is supposed to be horror. Better have Sadako do the thing.”
The Curse of Diminishing Returns
The saddest thing about Sadako (the movie, not the girl) is how thoroughly it misunderstands what made the franchise iconic:
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The original was tight. Clear rules, relentless build-up, iconic imagery.
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This one is messy. Half ghost story, half social media cautionary tale, half trauma drama. Yes, that’s three halves. The math checks out.
Instead of:
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A precise curse, we get vague hauntings.
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A focused investigation, we get scattered visions and dream sequences.
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True dread, we get cheap jumps and recycled motifs.
Elaiza Ikeda does the best she can as Mayu, but the character is written like a passive observer of her own movie. The little girl Sadako/focus-shifter has potential but is mostly a plot delivery system in pigtails.
And Sadako herself? She’s less “unstoppable cosmic curse” and more “overbooked, underwritten franchise mascot dragged out for one more scare.”
Final Verdict: Let the Tape Stay in the Well
Sadako (2019) feels like watching someone try to reboot your favorite horror villain by handing her a smartphone, a tragic backstory expansion pack, and a confused new protagonist who faints like it’s a contractual requirement.
It wants to be:
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A commentary on viral culture
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A tragic tale of abandonment
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A continuation of Ring 2
But mostly, it’s a reminder that sometimes the scariest thing you can do to a classic is keep making sequels.
If you’re a completionist, you’ll probably watch it anyway and then spend an hour sighing into your pillow. If you’re just here for Sadako at her best, do yourself a favor: rewind to the 1990s and leave this one on fast-forward.
