Japanese automatically register to my system as one of the best versions of ghost horrors, from Ju-On to Ringu and to One Missed Call. Tsutomu Hanabusa's The Ring 3D, the official fifth movie of the Ringu franchise and an attempt to reinvent the classic, seemed to fail on all grounds.
Enter Akane Ayukawa (Satomi Ishihara), a high school teacher who will battle against a vengeful spirit named Sadako. Vengeful spirit was ridiculed as a high school student because of her innate telekinetic powers (which Akane inexplicably similarly had).
Online celebrity Kiyoshi Kashiwada hosts a broadcast online displaying his own suicide (or not). Rumors spread in the internet that Kashiwada have watched a video clip plainly regarded as "cursed video tape". People who watches the tape will commit suicide that result to bizarre deaths.
Netizens especially the tweenteens are easily drawn to the "phenomenon" and madly search for the cursed video clip. One high school student that belonged to Ayukawa's class had watched the tape, and then another one watches, until Akane herself comes face to face with the fiendish entity.
Deserving to gain credit in attempts to reinvent the classic tale of Sadako, The Ring 3D sadly succeeded only in one thing: casting Satomi Ishihara. Ishihara's performance is investing and describably vulnerable so that you care about her. Besides this, there's nothing left to talk positively about here.
The 3D gimmick didn't seem to work in almost every bit of the ninety-six minute run time. The lackluster in the use of 3D with cheap fly-ins and fly-outs of objects; and timelapse shots that painfully revealed cheap greenscreen effects seemed to be the least of the problems in this failed attempt.
Director Hanabusa knows how to work with cheap jump scares but will take a lesson or two in telling a story well. Unlike the original, The Ring 3D is all shocks and no atmosphere. There's big difference between scare and suspense and the latter is much more powerful. The fifth installment intensely lacked of it, something the original had exceedingly that the entire experience was not for the faint of the heart.
The biggest problem of all is the hypocrisy and pretensions that are stuffed in the movie. The Ring 3D was well-adverted but as the ending credits roll, the value of the ticket is the same as others; the quality of the movie is what has in fact depreciated.
GRADE: C
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