Ring always felt like a very organic product to come out of the late 90s Japan. It dealt with common (for the time) themes like technophobia, the substitution of the natural with the artificial and the search for the divine within this new technological landscape. It looked at child neglect/abuse through the lens of religious archetypes of motherhood and hereditary sin. I think Sadako attempted to redefine these themes for the current digital era. Instead of hereditary sin, we now face reincarnation. Instead of VHS tapes (an analogue object), we have the ubiquitous internet. Motherhood, which had been adopted by a previously neglectful [psychic] mother in Ring and a [again psychic] student of the kid's father in the sequel, is now imposed upon a complete stranger. And, unlike previous protagonists, this one doesn't manage to sustain the new role. I think the goal this time around was to come to terms with the rapid growth of population (or perhaps even the digital presence of that population which hadn't been so acutely experienced before) and the increasing devaluation/relativization of the few remaining traditional values. I think the movie attempts to find a connection where we usually wouldn't. A woman who is an orphan and has only her brother, whom she cares for more than anything else, exists outside of the traditional family hierarchy, and yet she has to be the one to adopt the maternal role. You'd think she has little to no relation to the little girl, and yet she does. I think there's a beautiful message there saying we're all like one big family, even if that doesn't appear this way at a first glance. However, this film feels much less organic than the first two. It almost feels like it was done for the sake of being done, not because it came as a genuine inspiration to the creators. As I mentioned above, the first two movies were very relevant for the time, almost necessitated by it. This one feels like it didn't need to exist. Artistically there's very little in common here with the old movies.