The Scissors Massacre (2008)

The Scissors Massacre (2008) Japanese Title: Kuchisake-Onna 2 Translation: Slit-Mouth Woman 2

Starring: Rin Asuka, Yukie Kawamura, Akihiro Mayama, Yôsuke Saitô, Mayuko Iwasa, Masashi Taniguchi, Kôta Kusano, Haruka Nishimoto, Miki Hayashi, Erina

Director: Kôtarô Terauchi

The Scissors Massacre is a sequel-in-name-only to Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman, made the year before. It is, in fact, an alternate take on the origins of the urban legend, basing itself on an unsolved serial killer case from the late 1970s in Japan. Although the film takes a sharp supernatural turn in the final reel, the movie is not so much a horror film as it is a tragic family drama and an indictment of Japanese society on the whole.

The film has three acts, each of which feel like a completely different type of movie. The focus is on the Sawada family, a well-to-do family in the smaller city of Gifu in the Gifu Prefecture. The patriarch (Yosuke Saito, of Godzilla vs. Space Godzilla and Crazy Samurai Musashi) runs a successful chicken farm that supplies eggs and chicken meat (presumably) to the local markets. He has three daughters. Yukie (Mayuko Iwasa, of 009-1: The End of the Beginning), the eldest, is about to get married. The middle child, Sachiko (Yukie Kawamura, of Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl), has moved to the city (which I assume is Nagoya) to work as a beautician. The youngest of the three, Mayumi (Rin Asuka, of the Kamen Rider W incarnations), is a high school student in her junior year. She’s a promising athlete and might have a future with her long-time crush, Seiji (Akihiro Mayama, of Liar Paradox).

So everything seems to be all peachy keen for the Sawada family, until tragedy strikes. You see, before Yukie got engaged to her current beau, she dated a fellow named Suzuki (Masashi Taniguchi, of the Kamen Rider Amazon incarnation). Suzuki never quite got over the break up and watching his ex-girlfriend getting hitched is just enough to set the little bastard off. A few days after the wedding, Suzuki breaks into the Sawada household and sneaks into Yukie’s old bedroom…the one she had handed over to Mayumi after the wedding. Thinking that Mayumi is his former flame, he dumps a vial of sulfuric acid all over her face. He proceeds to stab Mrs. Sawada to death, but ultimately get his head blown off by Mr. Sawada.

This is where things start going downhill for the entire family. Although Mr. Sawada acted in self defense, the locals are nothing but a no-good bunch of talebearers and rumor-mongerers. So it isn’t long before people start attributing all sorts of sordid motivations to Sawada’s actions. And although Mayumi survives her burns, her face is permanently disfigured, making her a pariah at school. Even Yukie is forced to move back home, since all the local gossip will be directed at her new hubby and his family if she sticks around. I mean, what the hell, people?

The first casualty of the Sawada’s family situation is the patriarch. His clients no longer want to be associated with a company whose owner committed murder, or even is the subject to a monumental tragedy. As the debts pile up, he ultimately decides to commit suicide and let the life insurance policy tie up his financial loose ends. Then there’s Mayumi, who is abandoned by everybody she has ever called a friend, including her BFFs Junko (Miki Hayashi) and Kaoru (Deadball’s Erina). And then she starts having visions of a mysterious woman in a red coat. As Mayumi’s life spirals further and further down the crapper, it won’t be long before the poor young girl finally snaps…

The Scissors Massacre is based on some incident in Gifu around 1978 in which a serial killer took the lives of some 13 people and injured more than 50…presumably with a pair of scissors. Nobody ever found out who the killer was, although a knife was found in the residence of the family represented by the Sawadas with the DNA of one sister on the handle and the blood of another on the blade. The sister whose blood was on the blade was never found. So, this movie suggests that said sister became the basis for the Kuchisake-Onna urban legend.

The first act of the film plays like a heartwarming teen/family drama, with a little bit of small town “slice of life” mixed in. Everybody gets along and each member of the Sawada family (sans the mom, who doesn’t really have a character) has a promising future ahead. The second act becomes this dark family tragedy and an attack on Japanese culture. Japan has a closed, homogenous culture that is prone to gossip and (unfounded) rumors for anyone unfortunate enough to shake the box. This movie brings that out into the open and man, what the actual F***, guys? It’s not enough that your neighbors have gone through a tragedy, but do you have to make up your own interpretations of “what” and “why” and pass it off as truth, too? “I heard it from a friend” my ass. It is that sort of attitude that pushes the entire Sawada family off the precipice in the second act.

Besides the social commentary, another thing I liked is the directing technique of ending each act with a spectacular outburst of violence. Although the film on the whole is a family drama (and a murder mystery in the last half hour), each separate section of the film is punctuated with a strong moment of intense gore. Suzuki’s attack on the Sawada family is extremely brutal, culminating in his losing part of his skull (and the goo within) from a shotgun blast. At the end of the second act, in which the film morphs into a murder mystery with supernatural overtones, we see one supporting character get brutally stabbed to death. And the film ends with several characters meeting their bloody ends, too.

The movie works better as a social commentary and true crime tragedy than it does as an origin for an urban legend. This is especially because the supernatural elements feel out of place in an otherwise realistic story—given its basis in true events. Also, the film is never very scary, but I doubt that was the intent. I also think the movie was a bit long, even at 98 minutes. A number of scenes could’ve been shorn by a few seconds and the film would have felt a bit more tight in its execution. Finally, with regards to the American release title, can a “massacre” only involve six people? That’s not a “Scissors Massacre,” let alone a “Scissors Bloodbath” or “Scissors Slaughter.” Six people may not even be a “Scissors Disturbance.” Six dead bodies may simply be a “Scissors Inconvenience.”