Sadako vs Kayako (2016)

Well I finally hit "subscribe" on Amazon Prime for the addition of the Shudder channel! What made me finally subscribe to this awesome horror channel? "Sadako vs Kayako" is an exclusive on Shudder! I am a sucker for "VS" movies! Freddy vs Jason or Godzilla vs Whatever....if they make monsters fight I'm all in! This movie imparticular really intrigued me because I could not for the life of me figure out how they could make "The Ring vs The Grudge" work! Well in short let me tell you they make it work!

Here is the IMDB synopsis: "The vengeful spirits of the Ring and Grudge series face off." While I agree that you don't need much of a synopsis for a movie like this, I actually feel that there's a lot more to the movie and that's actually what makes it pretty good!

The Grade: B (Really cool story leading to an unlikely battle between two evil ghouls! Not crazy about some of the liberties taken with their respective mythologies, but overall good stuff!)

The Good:

This movie for the most part does a great job of keeping the tension filled atmosphere of the original two franchises. Most of this movie is not a "vs" movie at all, but about people being cursed by these two ghosts separately and attempting to find a way to deal with it. I enjoyed the separate story-lines that later would become intertwined. Just people becoming cursed and the tension filled race to find a cure. The body count was much higher than normal for both of these franchises which made it kind of fun in that regard. For the most part the characters dealing with these ghosts were interesting and kind of funny at times. The use of psychics to understand the nature of the curses was cool since none of the movies in their separate franchises really ended up using the services of a psychic. The sound design in the movie was also a strong point as it should be! The sound that Kayako makes from "The Grudge" is still very unnerving! Once the fight occurs it is very cool! All in all a pretty solid film!

The Bad:

The main thing that really bugged me about this film is they decided to change the mythologies of the two separate franchises. In essence what they do is they make things happen much "faster" in order to keep things chugging along and get to the fight at the end. I find this to be very unfortunate even though I can understand why they would do this. Us horror fans know these two franchises well and changing them just to get them to fight easier is not okay! Some of the kills came off a bit goofy. This might have been intentional, but I can not say for sure. I feel like they could have added even more tension if they stuck to a serious tone. Additionally some of the CGI used could have been better and also takes away potential tension because you just don't believe it as much as you could. Lastly one of the characters is very annoying and whiny, but that's not unheard of in a horror movie. I just looked forward to their demise! Mwahahahaaha!

The Ugly:

Distribution! Why is it so hard to get these movies in the United States! Thank goodness Shudder grabbed this movie! I really want to see more foreign films and independent films. I've considered finding a way to create a hub where people could upload their movies that did not get distribution. I consider this often as I hear about awesome movies out there that never make it to my screen!

In Conclusion:

This was a very solid movie for such a crazy premise! I do recommend it, but just be forewarned that they change up the rules with these two ghosts and that might upset some fans more than it upset me. I still got a lot of fun out of this movie and I was actually nervous at times. Especially when dealing with Kayako from "The Grudge." Man that sound is always terrifying! I say go watch it and enjoy! This might also mean subscribing to Shudder which I also recommend for horror fans!