The Loop is poop.

      Koji Suzuki is the Stephen King of Japan, only more twisted and complex.
      His breakout novel, “Ring,” became an international horror phenomenon almost overnight. It was a dark, narrative séance, conjuring M. R. James’ scholarly, character-driven ghost stories and even Chuck Palahniuk’s witty social irreverence. The story was so innovative and well written that it spawned numerous retellings, including a Japanese mini-series and movie, both entitled “Ringu,” and later the 2002 American blockbuster “The Ring.” A few years later, Suzuki’s definitive series continued with its first sequel, “Spiral,” a deliciously disturbing study of twisted and morally flawed characters.
      In 2006, Glynne Walley’s translation of the trilogy’s swansong, “Loop,” was first published in English. Set many years after the events of the other books, this iteration follows the research boy genius Kaoru Futami as he investigates a devastating pandemic, a sweeping virus that mimics both cancer and AIDS. In order to find a cure and save the world, he must revisit and dissect key scenes from the previous books through time travel, viewing the moments as they actually happen and learning from the mistakes of the series’ previous main characters. The plot sounds strong and original, and fans of the series couldn’t wait to see Suzuki’s novels turned on their head. It was supposed to be the stunning conclusion to one of the scariest, most lauded horror franchises of our time, in any language.
      But what fans received was an ambitious disappointment. Suzuki’s latest novel is an attempted marriage of horror and science fiction, but it sadly amounts to little more than horrible science drivel.
The first 100 pages are slower than creeping death, reading like the driest of biology textbooks. Suzuki largely abandons his skill of emotive character development, bringing in a cast of scientists so distant and mechanical that the reader cannot care if they live or die. The strength of the author’s horror has always been in his flawed but fleshed individuals. Here, the characters are so faceless that he never even bothers to describe them. These men and women are empty shells, an army of drones sent to tear this series apart.
      Behold a sample nugget of the author’s progressive new style of prose, as one character lectures on cancer: “With normal cells, growth stops when the growth factor in the blood serum is used up and within a Petri dish, they won’t multiply beyond a single layer no matter how much growth factor is added, due to what is called contact inhibition. Cancer cells not only lack contact inhibition, but have an extremely low dependence on...” Shut up, Koji Suzuki! Just be quiet, go sit in the corner and think about what you’ve done to my beloved Ring series. This cannot be the finale that I, and countless other rabid Ring fans, have been waiting for.
      The whole novel is so dead and bloated that I can’t attribute its failures solely to the author himself. Despite being Suzuki’s longtime translator, Walley’s work seems awkward and lazy. “Loop” is riddled with painful phrases like, “It was not-unpleasant,” and, “The door was locked, probably it led to a bathroom.” Suzuki’s voice sounds stiff and sloppy, which is starkly uncharacteristic of his and Walley’s moving, poetic and terrifying collaborative effort in the past.
      When the story eventually kicks in, “Loop” does seem to show a little hope. Most of the signature elements of quality Japanese horror fiction are set in motion, including child suicide and random fits of furious masturbation. In separate scenes, these elements are a delightful read to the avid horror fan. But when a character witnesses her only son plunging himself out of a hospital window, and begins to masturbate on the spot to ease her distress, it’s something other than horrifying. It’s just uncomfortable. Suzuki forces this sort of tasteless schlock between tantrums of medical jargon in order to keep the reader’s interest, but the storyline never recovers from its truly trudging outset.
      Most of the novel’s key plot advancements rely on the cast’s outrageous mental leaps, each being a bit too flimsy to be satisfying. For instance, one character surveys a numeric list of genetic bases that compose the story’s villainous virus (3,072; 393,216; 12,288; and other tedious digits that go on for half a page), realizes instantly that they are all solutions to the equation 2ⁿ x 3, and concludes that the worldwide cancer must have descended from a computer virus. Both “Ring” and “Spiral” were revered for their smooth, logical transitions through supernatural situations. The plot twists here, however, are so implausible and poorly executed that I don’t even mind spoiling them in this review. They were spoiled at inception.
      In the novel’s final pages, Suzuki tops this distasteful cake with a cherry so rancid and clichéd, it actually hurts to ingest. He pulls out, from his apparently spent bag of tricks, the sorriest excuse for the already despicable “it was all a dream” ending I’ve ever read. Not only does Suzuki essentially null the book in my betrayed hands, but every book in the series. Of course, his version of this narrative no-no is as overly complicated as the rest of the novel, but, in essence, the whole trilogy never happened.
      Oh, Koji Suzuki, why did this have to happen?
      The inside sleeve of “Loop” asks the reader to “forget everything you thought you knew about the Ring.” Perhaps it should have read, “Forget everything you knew you loved about this series.” Here we have a typically blessed writer and translator misaligning their unique and promising vision into a plodded mess.
      What began as a great idea was somehow ruined in execution, and now die-hard fans must suffer the outcome. “Loop” is an aching disappointment.