Sadako has come for the YouTubers, at last
The last few years—filled as they’ve been with tales of red pillers, edgelords, and breadcrumb huffing QAnonsters all going algorithmically out of their minds thanks to toxic internet viewing habits—have conspired to make the premise of the Ring series of novels and films kind of undeniable, maybe even a little quaint. (Oh, can watching the wrong video destroy a person and everyone around them, creepy Japanese ghost girl? Thanks for recapping our last three Thanksgivings.)
And yet, while the series’ resident poorly coiffed revenants, Sadako/Samara, have wrestled with social media-addicted youths in the past (notably in the short film Rings, which saw daredevil teens record their experience while suffering the ubiquitous curse before passing it off to someone else), they’ve never come up fully against the YouTube generation, the sort of everybody-loses confrontation that can only end with the entire internet being burnt to the ground. (Fingers crossed!)
But no more: Per The Playlist, there’s now a new trailer for Sadako, the latest film in the Japanese series of Ring movies, revealing that a haunted YouTuber is now one of the titular ghost’s most clearly deserving victims. Here’s the plot synopsis; we’ve highlighted the most obviously Logan Paul moment of the entire thing:
The film will star Elaiza Ikeda as the main character Mayu Akigawa, a psychology counselor who gets involved in an incident with Yusuke Ishida, played by Takashi Tsukamoto, who will try to fix it. Hiroya Shimizu will play the part of Mayu’s younger brother Kazuma Akigawa who becomes a YouTuber to try and awaken Sadako’s curse. Himeka Himejima will play Jinko, a mysterious girl who lost her memory and is taken in at the hospital Mayu works at. Renn Kiriyama will play Mayu’s colleague Minori Fujii.
Dude, c’mon.
Sadako—which is also notable for being a return to the franchise for Hideo Nakata, who directed the original Ringu (and also, uh, the American The Ring Two)—has yet to secure an North American release date, although it will show at this year’s Fantasia Film Festival. Meanwhile, we’re going to spend the rest of our day huddling in the corner, terrified at the idea of Alex Jones or Ben Shapiro suddenly popping out of our TVs to yell at us about the “deep state” in person, until we eventually curl up and die. (Fingers crossed!)