Sadako's ghost breaks free from a cave on Oshima Island and appears inside Hatsuko's apartment.

At Kurokawa Memorial General Hospital, clinical psychologist Dr. Mayu Akikawa examines her patient, Ms. Kurahashi.

Wandering the streets alone, Hatsuko's daughter collapses after encountering the ghost of a woman who jumped off a bridge to her death.

Detectives inform Mayu and her supervisor, Dr. Minoru Fujii, about the fire that killed five people, including Hatsuko, at the apartment building.

Mayu's dropout brother Kazuma works with web marketing consultant Yusuke Ishida to boost his social media presence as an aspiring YouTube personality.

Mayu watches an online video that shows talismans covering the interior of the closet where the girl was imprisoned.

In a dream, Mayu relives the girl's experience of imprisonment in a closet, while her mother accuses her of being Sadako reincarnated.

Ishida, who watched the video, meets with Mayu and tells her about a cave on Oshima Island in Izu that became a shrine for dead priests until it was rendered off-limits by a cave-in.

While taking a ferry to the island, Mayu warns Ishida that circumstances regarding the mysterious little girl's upbringing resurrected Sadako's curse.

Mayu and Ishida come across an old woman in the cave, who reveals that unwanted babies are abandoned and left to die inside the shrine, and Sadako feeds on their souls.

Mayu, who grew up as an orphan along with her brother, wonders if she and Kazuma were also called by Sadako to gather in the cave shrine with other abandoned spirits.

[8] James Marsh of the South China Morning Post gave the film a score of two-and-a-half out of five stars, writing that the film's "balance between the old world and new media is awkward and only intermittently successful, but nevertheless drags this lurching, wayward franchise back in the right direction".

[9] Conversely, Meagan Navarro of Bloody Disgusting lamented that the film "presents a wide open world of unexplored possibilities", and concluded that "despite a premise that suggests an attempt to modernize this franchise, nothing has changed at all.

[11] Nick Allen of RogerEbert.com noted the film as having "sporadic lukewarm scares" and wrote: "Sadako is far too touch-and-go with its chilling potential, all despite the promise from its creepy young lead (Himeka Himejima) [...] there are so many story pieces that don't build to grandiosity, so much as drag viewers to an underwhelming climax".