Freddie vs. Jason. Aliens vs. Predator. King Kong vs. Godzilla.
Hollywood has a long history of throwing two different horror icons, often from two different franchises, at each other and watching gleefully as they battle each other to the welcome tune of ringing box office cash registers. Sadako vs. Kayako is the newest, but not, unfortunately, the best version to throw its hat into the ring.
Heh, ring.
After a creepy introduction reminding us about The Cursed Video Tape That Kills You Two Days After You Watch It (I thought it was seven days? Am I misremembering?), friends Yuri (Mizuki Yamamoto) and Natsumi (Aimi Satsukawa) buy an old VHS player so that they can copy Natsumi’s parent’s wedding video for them. Naturally, there is an old videotape already in the machine, and naturally they watch it and naturally the phone rings right after to announce their death sentence.
They, naturally, freak out. Luckily for them, they are both students in Professor Morishige ‘s (Masahiro Komoto) class and he, naturally, has just written a book on urban legends. He is ecstatic that they might have the Actual Cursed Tape.
Meanwhile, high schooler Suzuka (Tina Tamashiro) has moved into a new home which is, naturally, next door to The Cursed Home where Kayako and her son Toshio were killed by her crazed husband and whose spirits now are just waiting in the shadows of their darkened abandoned house to take their revenge on whoever walks in.
Wow, there sure are a lot of lucky coincidences happening in this movie.
The scenes regarding The Grudge ghosts seem almost like an afterthought; like the director suddenly thought, “Oh, right, it’s Sadako VERSUS Kayako, not just Sadako Rides Again, and threw those parts at the film to satisfy the title, as opposed to actually providing meaningful suspense.
Things take an odd turn when shaman Kyozo (Masanobu Ando) and his pocket-sized blind psychic assistant Tamao (Maiko Kikuchi). Kyozo, after a disastrous failed exorcism, comes up with the bright idea of getting both ghosts to destroy each other and finally leave us poor mortals alone. The battle between Sadako and Kayako is fun, and director Kôji Shiraishi (Carved, Grotesque) does include some effective shocks and startles (and, if you hate that weird guttural “uuuhhhhh…” that Kayako growls, well you might want to turn the sound down a bit), but occasionally Shiraishi descends into some weird slapstick that belongs in a Stephen Chow kung fu flick (one gentleman gets his neck comically stretched and stretched, for example).
Shiraishi has done some fun, creepy movies in the past (Carved is a fave of mine), but this one seems very by-the-numbers and unenthusiastic. If you’re a huge fan of these movies, a completist, you’ll watch this and enjoy it and then promptly forget about it. There’s no new territory being forged, just the same old same old.
Uncle Mike sez: *shrug* sure, why not?
Sadako vs. Kayako is now available on Shudder.com
