Sadako - watch at your own expense

There is one scene in Sadako in which director Tsutomu Hanabusa should have nailed right from the start -- the lid of the well where Sadako was dumped.

That should keep Sadako in her place and save us from having to go through this horrible horror flick in the first place.

Since the 1998 Japan horror The Ring, Sadako has become such a household horror brand name that it's spawned at least two other movies -- The Ring 2 and a feeble Hollywood remake -- neither of which tipped the scare-o-metre clocked by the original film.

This one's no exception.

In this movie -- which is a tweaked version of The Ring featuring a brand new cast and storyline  --  director Hanabusa pushes Sadako to her limits. Our Japanese friend here is no longer crawling out of TVs but instead-- get this -- Mac Books, large LCD billboards and smartphone screens of sorts.

While there is commendable technological evolution in Sadako, the plot remains more or less the same: A cursed video recording is uploaded online and whoever watches it ends up killing himself or herself.

Cue heroine of movie, high school teacher Akane (Satomi Ishihara) whose student leaps off a building after watching the said vid. As Akane probes her student's death, she unwittingly gets embroiled in this cursed video business.

Apart from believable acting, there's little else to celebrate.

There could have been better use of horror-movie techniques, such as employing sound effects.

Sadly, there was no abrupt ringing of the telephone, sudden sound of an opening cupboard, or spooky audio to mark the start of something eerie.

It's so not boomz.

Then, there's the occasional cliched scene that is so predictable I suspect Hanabusa was sleepy when he wrote that part of the storyline.

Also, what's sorely missing in Sadako is suspense.

Unlike The Ring, in which Sadako's crawl-out-of-TV scene caught many by surprise, the hairy hantu in Sadako is crawl-happy, acting like some attention-seeking jack-in-the-box by wanting to pop out of every available screen in Japan.  

What a turn off, Sadako. And you wonder why your cursed video viewers scramble to cut electricity supply of their gadgets.

Or kill themselves after.