Well, that's the end of Ringu. They've killed the franchise. I also said that after Sadako 3D and I was wrong, but they've started taking the piss out of it. Wikipedia calls it a "supernatural comedy horror film" (although I disagree) and after this it's going to be hard to make Sadako scary again.

I also think the film's pretty bad.

Its heroine is Ayaka Ichijo (played by Fuka Koshiba), a university student who also appears on TV talk shows. She's got an IQ of 200, she's memorised the Guinness Book of Records and she can do Sherlock Holmes deductions about her family members. She also comes across as cold, repeatedly giving unfriendly brush-offs to one boy (although admittedly he's self-obsessed and refuses to take "no" for an answer). Also, importantly, I disagreed with her logic. She treats the curse as an intellectual puzzle and bases all her analysis on the assumption that it behaves like a viral infection.

In fairness, she's ultimately proved right. What's more, we've seen similar logic in previous Ringu films (especially Rasen/Spiral). Trying to uncover the rules of the ghost has always been something Ringu protagonists do, ever since the first film. Even so, more than once Ichijo's reasoning struck me as questionable and I'd have laughed had she died as a result. She's ignoring all factors except the virus interpretation and assuming that grudges, emotion, supernatural factors, etc. can all be neglected as contributory factors. In the last film, for instance, Sadako was an orphaned child whose mother committed suicide. Here, she's just an evolving disease. Here's the development of Ichijo's arguments in this film:

1. "Curses don't exist and everything can be explained by science."

2. "My sister watched the video and now she might have only 24 hours to live. In other words, she's caught a virus with a 24-hour incubation period." (The arguments that follow from this assumption are quite interesting, though.)

3. "I think I've found a cure for the curse! Should I check my assumptions, wait and see for another few hours, do a couple of tests, etc.? What if I'm wrong? Aha, impossible! I'll send a message to the world on social media to order everyone to watch the video immediately!" (Yes, she's wrong. Frankly, a deserved outcome from this would have been the death of everyone in Japan.)

4. "Whoops, still seeing ghosts. Should I rethink any of my assumptions? No, let's keep going as above!"

I lost patience. I didn't like these people. Ayako Ichijo is unfriendly and the kind of intelligent person who's liable to let their logic make them stupid. She puts too much trust in theories that are ultimately just her own guesses. Kenshin (Hiroyuki Ikeuchi) is a huckster and worse. Kazuma Kawamura (Oji Maeda) is a show-off and poser whose technique with girls is to ignore the word "no" and never stop badgering them. In fairness, these men's characterisation has wackier choices than you usually see in horror movies. (That would support the categorisation of "supernatural comedy horror".) I didn't like them, though.

The horror content doesn't work. Sadako's killing period has contracted, from a week to a day. Watch her video and you'll die in 24 hours' time... so, in other words, you're safe until then. Any white-robed apparitions can be ignored. In other words, all those ghosts are a waste of time and I started getting bored of them. (By the time we reach the end credits, even the movie's characters have reached the same conclusion and are treating them as family pets or something. It's played for laughs. Personally, I wouldn't call this film a comedy, but those end credits are definitely taking the mickey.)

Even Sadako's kills aren't that scary. They're bloodless and painless. It's still possible to make her terrifying, of course, but she isn't here. Also... killing with hair? Really?

Regarding the title, DX means "digital transformation", i.e. upgrading business processes for the digital world. Which, on reflection, Sadako isn't doing. She's still killing people with VHS tapes. There's lots of social media, etc. but the 2019 Sadako film did better at making YouTubers etc. seem dangerous.

This isn't a sequel to Rasen/Spiral, despite wikipedia's claims. It's exploring similar concepts (e.g. "Sadako's virus" mutating, comparison with smallpox, etc.), but there's no reference to characters or events from any film except the original Ringu.

Don't bother with this one. The characters annoyed me and the horror content isn't scary. Ayaka Ichijo analysing the rules about the virus strikes me as practically deconstruction. At root, it's like that Gremlins 2 scene where a bunch of smart alecs nitpick the "don't eat after midnight" rule. It's also an unmemorable outing for Sadako herself. This is the kind of film to make you wish the heroine's logic had been wrong and the human race had died gruesomely.