Three K-Horror Reviews

Face (2004) 
Original Title: 페이스
Translation: Face

Starring: Shin Hyun-Joon, Song Yun-Ah, Oh Jung-se, Ahn Seok-Hwan
Director: Yoo San-Gang

If you look at the cover and watch the first 10-15 minutes, it's a total bait n' switch from the actual movie you'll watch. This is not a post-Ringu horror film so much as it is a police procedural/crime lab film in which the long-haired Asian ghost is mainly an impetus for the main character to get off his rump and start doing his job.

The film begins with a woman in strapped to a bed in a clandestine operating room getting her heart forcibly removed by an unknown doctor-type. We jump to the present, in which Jin, daughter of Lee Hyun-Mi (Shin Hyun-Joon, of Barefoot Ki-bong and Stairway to Heaven), has just gotten a heart transplant and is having difficulties adapting to her new heart. After a stint in the hospital, Lee takes her to her grandmother's house in the sticks to recover and breathe some fresh air. Lee is a master in the field of face reconstruction, but is planning on leaving his job to stay with his daughter. Before he can do that, an up-and-coming young lady in the same industry, Jung Sun-Yong (Song Yun-Ah, of Jail Breakers and Wedding Dress), shows up at his house with a skull for him to reconstruct.

Initially, Hyun-Mi just wants to be left alone so he can be with his daughter. But after he starts getting haunted by a female ghost, he gets the message and starts reconstructing the face of the skull with Sun-Yong's assistance. Meanwhile, a detective named Min-ho (Oh Jung-se, of The Call and When the Camellia Blooms) has been investigating the case of all these skeletons popping up--apparently, Hyun-Mi and his workplace have already done more than a few for the police. His investigation takes him to the same hospital where Jin had gotten her heart transplant. And considering that the surgeon who performed the transplant, Dr. Yoon (Ahn Seok-Hwan, of Heartbreak Hotel and Shotgun Love), is reluctant to tell Hyun-Mi just who the donor is, things are starting to look mighty suspicious.

Face is creepy in the first fifteen minutes during the initial hauntings, but once Hyun-Mi gets to work reconstructing the face of the skull Sun Yong brings him, the supernatural elements take a back seat to what is more of a police procedural drama. There is a big twist right before the climax that is actually surprising, although the metaphysics of it make little sense if you stop to think about it. That said, besides the genre bait and switch, the problem with Face is the lack of immediacy and forward momentum to the story. Supposedly, he has to determine the identity of the victim in order to save his daughter, but the script and direction don't really convey a sense of urgency. In the end, the film has some interesting ideas, but fails in their execution.


The Wig (2005)
Original Title: 가발
Translation: Wig

Starring: Chae Min-Seo, Yoo Sun, 
Director: Won Shin-yun

The idea of "evil hair" showed up (first) in John Carpenter's Body Bags, an anthology that featured a story called "Hair," about a hair transplant and an alien parasite. It was parodied to an extent--along with The Hands of Orlac--in The Simpsons "Treehouse of Horror IX", in which Homer wears a toupée of a recently-executed Snake, and then gets possessed. The Wig takes the general premise and treats it with the utmost seriousness.

Soo-hyeon (Chae Min-Seo, of Loner and Vegetarian) is dying of cancer. She apparently is in her last stages, judging from the emotional response of the orderly who is getting her belongings together before she leaves the hospital (presumably to spend her last moments at home with her sister). Said sister, Ji-hyeon (Yoo Sun, The Uninvited), shows up to bring her sister home with a little gift: a wig. If nothing else, she can at least enjoy her final days out and about the town without people looking at her funny.

Of course, as this film is called The Wig, you can imagine that things won't go so smoothly as Soo-hyeon simply taking walks in Seoul and then peacefully going in her sleep. There are a series of unexplained scenes at the very beginning that suggest something is not right. Moreover, a few brief shots of the wig suggest it might have a mind of its own. But once Soo-hyeon starts wearing it, that's where things start to change. At first it's a quick vision or two. Spooky, but manageable. But when a friend of Ji-hyeon's borrows the wig in an attempt to seduce her philandering husband into staying in their marriage, then things start to get weird. And it's not long before Soo-hyeon's personality starts to change, too.

The main problem with The Wig is that it tries to be a slow-burn horror, but takes too long to get to the interesting part, which is when Ji-Hyeon finally tries to find out what the deal is with the titular object. That portion is crammed into the third act, along with the climax, where the truth really comes out. Much time is spent trying to develop the characters, but considering the minimal dialog, the fact that Ji-hyeon is a mute (due to a random accident that makes sense at the end), and director Won Shin-yun's intentional obfuscation of story details, it's hard to really get a true feel for the characters. He wants us the viewer to meet him halfway with the story, but doesn't give us much to really work with until the last half hour or so. The finale is tragic, made even worse by the last-second introduction of information that further muddies the moral waters of a character's actions, But that said, The Wig is rarely scary, or even creepy. It's mainly melancholic with the occasional graphic image.

Into the Mirror (2003)
Original Title: 거울속으로
Translation: Inside the Mirror

Starring: Yoo Ji-tae, Kim Myung-min, Kim Hye-na, Kim Myung-soo, Gi Ju-bong, Lee Yeong-jin
Director: Kim Sung-ho

Much like Face, this is another thriller in which the horror elements mainly exist to set up a police procedural. In contrast to that film, this movie has a more interesting story, more well-developed characters, and ultimately a better pay off. It does run a little long at 113 minutes, but it's the most satisfying of the past three K-horror films I've watched this month.

The movie begins at a department store that is a few days away from its reinauguration following a deadly fire the year before. An employee named Choi Mi-jeong (Lee Yeong-jin) is leaving the place after hours, but not before pilfering a few items from the establishment, including a stainless steel pizza cutter. After a false scare involving a security guard, Choi heads to the bathroom in compose herself before leaving. Curiously, her work badge falls off when she's looking at herself in the mirror. But when Choi bends over to pick it up...her reflection stands completely still...and then takes the pizza cutter...

After Choi's body is found in the bathroom, there's a media circus involving the corpse, both because of the upcoming inauguration and the fact that the company still hasn't paid reparations to the families of those who perished in the fire. Nonetheless, the president of the company, Jeong Il-sung (Gi Ju-bong, of Joint Security Area and Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance), only cares about the reinauguration and the bottom line. So it annoys him to no end when Police Inspector Heo Hyun-Su (Kim Myung-min, of Monstrum and The Battle of Jangsari), shows up to transform the department store into a base of operations for a homicide investigation. His presence is cemented by the mysterious elevator death of another employee.

Enter the president's nephew: Woo Yeong-min (Yoo Ji-tae, of Oldboy and The House that Jack Built). Woo is a disgraced former detective and now the head of security for the mall. The director of the mall, Choi Sang-gi (Kim Myung-soo, of Joint Security Area), asks Woo to run a parallel investigation. So, while Inspector Heo is looking into the history of the department store and the fact that the victims of these mysterious deaths worked in the same administrative department, Security Chief Woo begins to investigate the one member of the team who died in the aforementioned fire, which brings him into contact with her mentally-ill sister, Lee Ji-hyeon (Kim Hye-na, of Melo and Red Eye). Ji-hyeon spent time in a mental institution and used to believe that she could communicate with her sister through mirrors. In fact, according to her, her deceased sister is still hiding inside the mirrors...

One thing I liked is how the two parallel investigations allow the viewer to learn more about what's going, albeit from two different angles. While Woo and his interactions with Lee Ji-hyeon help paint a picture of who the film's resident spectre is, it's the investigation of Inspector Heo that puts context to the ghost's backstory and raison d'être. Both stories push the entire plot forward, as opposed to Face, which is mainly about the main character getting the gumption to mold clay onto a face while the supporting police guy just figures out stuff that we ourselves already have noticed. The strained relationship between Chief Woo and Inspector Heo is also compelling as the two slowly come to terms with the tragic incident that ended Woo's police career. Compare with Face, where the police investigation subplot runs independent of the main story thread until the very end.

Is Into the Mirror scary? After the initial batch of supernatural deaths, not very. But the story is engrossing and there is some neat photography, especially some tracking shots that made me think of Dario Argento in his best moments. The use of mirrors as a modus operandi for the ghost's killings is neat, but they also serve to show us how Chief Woo is wrestling with his past self and what he'd like his present self to be. The finale is a bit protracted before the expected supernatural retribution takes place. The film ends on a twist that I didn't see coming and should have viewers pondering its implications for a few days.

Remade by Hollywood in 2008 as Mirrors with Keifer Sutherland.

"The Eye" trilogy

The Eye (2002) 
Chinese Title: 見鬼
Translation: See Ghost

Starring: Angelica Lee Sin-Je, Lawrence Chou Chun-Wai, Candy Lo Hau-Yam, Fong Chin-Fat, Chen Chi-Choi, Chutcha Rujinanon, So Yat-Lai
Director: Danny & Oxide Pang


We fans of HK cinema often joke about the Anglican names of HK celebrities often being names that are obsolete here in the West--Mavis? Bosco? But, where the heck did "Oxide" Pang get his name? Anyway, this film seemed to be a minor hit in the pan-Asia market, at least enough to merit two sequels and a wedding between lead actress Angelica Lee and Oxide Pang. You know you're working with something good or memorable when Hollywood opts to remake it.

The movie begins with a young blind lady named Mun (Angelica Lee) musing to herself whether or not the world is a beautiful place. She's about to undergo a cornea transplant, so she's going to find out about it for herself. The surgery is a success and, after a few days of recovery, she is taken to a room in the hospital to remove the bandages in front of her sister (Candy Lo) and grandmother (Ko Yin Ping). She sees three blurry images in front of her: her sister, grandma and...well, someone. Gradually, her vision is restored, although she has an interesting experience with a shadow figure coming to visit the old lady in the next bed over.

Once out of the hospital, she begins to start her life anew. She begins to learn calligraphy. She undergoes therapy with a certain Dr. Wah (Lawrence Cho), a psychologist who wishes to ease her back into the world of the vision unimpaired. She continues playing the violin for a special blind orchestra, although she learns that they have a bit of prejudice toward the recipients of new corneas. On the other hand, she also starts having some peculiar experiences: she meets a boy on her floor who has lost his report card; she has nightmares set at another hospital; sometimes her bedroom temporarily changes into one unfamiliar; and finally she sees a shadowy figure hovering over the body of a kid hit by a car...whom had just spoken to her a few minutes before. Thus, the question arises: just who donated the corneas to Mun?

The Eye is Hong Kong's answer to The Sixth Sense by way of films like Blink (1994) and The Hands of Orlac. The first half is mainly horror, as Mun's new gift in life comes with a terrifying side effect. Although the ghosts she sees are not physically dangerous, they are common enough to scare the bejesus out of the poor young lady at regular intervals. By the final act, she has come to terms with her new powers and seeks to find the truth behind the person whose corneas she inherited, at which point the film becomes more of a tragic supernatural melodrama. The Eye is well-acted and there is an awful sense of inevitability to the climax, which brings Mun's story full circle. In some ways, The Eye is sort of a retelling of the Greek myth of Cassandra.

Following this film's success, several low-budget films about eye transplants gone wrong were made in the States before it was remade with Jessica Alba. See films like Deadly Visions and Jill for similar premises. The movie is creepy at times, but not extremely scary, and lacks a good 11th hour twist to make it memorable.


The Eye 2 (2004) 
Chinese Title: 見鬼2
Translation: See Ghost 2

Starring: Shu Qi, Phillip Kwok Chun-Fung, Eugenia Yuen Lai-Kai, Jesdaporn Pholdee, Rayson Tan, Lam Chi-Tai, Derek Tsang Kwok-Cheung
Director: Danny & Oxide Pang

 I think when it comes to a premise like this, talk of a sequel immediately invites the fear that any follow-up will simply be a remake of the original. And while this film obviously shares the same basic structure as the first one, it thankfully is it's own little creature. In some ways, I think the film is better than the first one, stumbling only at the climax. The Eye 2 is very much The Sixth Sense, but through a purely Buddhist lens--although a Hindu lens would probably present one with a similar output.

We open in Bangkok with a young lady, Joey Cheng (the luscious Shu Qi), going on a buying spree. As things progress, it becomes clear that Joey is in the middle of a messy break-up that has left her more than a little unstable. So unstable, in fact, that her plan for the evening is to max out all her credit cards and then overdose on barbitrates in her hotel room. She does go through with her plan, although she does end up surviving, thanks to the hotel employees who entered her room for a wake-up call. While she was in her near-death throes, she noticed that there were a lot of people showing up in her hotel room, although she doesn't recognize the significance of it. Following her recovery, she does witness a Buddhist ritual cleansing of her previous room: a maid informs her that when the act of suicide invites the presence of ghosts to the hotel.

Back in Hong Kong, Joey starts having seeing people that other people cannot. Moreover, she witnesses phenomena like random objects falling over. At the same time, she discovers that she is pregnant with the child of her ex-boyfriend, who has been avoiding her.  As she wrestles as to whether or not she wants to keep the baby, a chance encounter with a rapist results in her going all "Rats in the Walls" on the "poor" scumbag and nearly eating his face off. Someone, or something, really,  really wants her to have that baby.

Although the first film was a serviceable, well-acted variation on The Sixth Sense, it sort of felt like two separate movies. In that case, the real plot didn't start until the second half or so. The Eye 2 feels a lot more focused, even if a lot of the ghostly encounters are the random consequences of being able to see spirits. The focus is Shu Qi's Joey Cheng learning to deal with both her powers and an unwanted pregnancy, with the stakes being raised as Joey realizes that both are connected. The Eye 2 tackles heavy topics like suicide, infidelity, and guilt, and at its very core, it is a strongly Pro-Choice film. Even if I don't agree with the sociological implications of this film's religious beliefs, I credit for doing a good job in developing the ideas onscreen.

The Eye 2 is also more visceral and frequently scarier than the first film, with several scenes that made my heart skip a beat. The finale is quite bloody, although not in a way you might imagine (without me giving spoilers). The problem is that once it is revealed what the stakes are, the climax isn't particularly scary, and it's executed in a repetitive manner. The final two scenes are practically maudlin, with a brief "spooky" final image to justify the ominous music playing over the final credits. But given the spiritual explanations for what's going on in the film, there's nothing creepy about that final image if you think about it for two seconds. 


The Eye 10 (2005)
aka: The Eye 3
Chinese Title: See Ghost 10

Starring: Wilson Chen Bolin, Kate Yeung Ki, Ray MacDonald, Isabella Leung Lok-Sze, Kris Gu Yu, Bongkoth Kongmalai
Director: Danny & Oxide Pang

So yeah, there is no The Eye 3...or 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 or 9. The Pang Brothers close out their Eye trilogy with The Eye 10. The title refers to a Thai book about black magic that references ten different ways one may see a ghost, with haunted corneas and suicide-while-pregnant being two of those. This film explores the other eight ways, which is definitely interesting. On one hand, the Pang brothers are not repeating themselves. Unfortunately, while the first two films were serious horror films, this one goes full Hong Kong Movie in its execution.

The movie opens with a Buddhist exorcism in Thailand of a woman possessed by spirits, which involves her body levitating and then licking(!) the monks with a giant CGI tongue. Cue the opening credits, set to upbeat music with graphics that make one think of an early 90s TV series about teens (or twenty-somethings) having fun over the summer. Four friends--April (Isabella Leong), May (Kate Yeung), Teddy (Wilson Chen) and Kofei (Kris Gu)--are spending their vacation in Thailand, where they've made friends with a local, Chongkwai (Ray MacDonald). One evening, the group decides to tell each other ghost stories, at which point Chongkwai whips out a book he recently bought about how to see ghosts. Being the idiots they are, they decide to try out several of the rituals, like "Spirit in a Cup" (the Thai version of Ouija) and "Invitation to Dinner." 

Both ceremonies do allow them to see ghosts, although May is "left out." Determined to see a ghost for herself, she convinces Chongkwai to do another ritual, which is basically "hide-and-seek in a forest at night while carrying a black cat." On one hand, May doesn't get to see any ghost. On the other, Kofei goes missing. April, his girlfriend, goes into hysterics and, convinced he might be dead, performs yet another ritual in which she annoints her eyes with the soil from a cemetery, which almost gets her killed. At this point, May and Teddy go back to Hong Kong...but their experience with the supernatural is not over yet.

When I said that The Eye 10 is pure HONG KONG, I think fans of the Jade Screen know what I'm getting at: jarring tonal inconsistencies, inappropriate music that suggests comedy or action where things should be scary, ghost possessions played for laughs, and just an overall sense of weirdness to the whole endeavor. In one scene, a character is chased down the hallway by a sentient basketball. In another, a pair of B-Boys have a dance off with one of the characters, who has just been possessed. The finale has our characters raiding the spirit world and fighting off malignant ghosts with their breath, which they project toward their foes as if they were hadouken from Street Fighter II. While things don't get to Wong Jing levels of looniness, the film is impossible to take seriously.

In addition to the schlocky tone that's at odds with the serious approach of the previous two movies, The Eye 10 just looks tacky overall. The CGI is woeful. The photography looks late 90s UPN series, complemented by the crappy special effects. The ghosts are meant to look scary, with their white make up and black highlights, but lack the atmosphere to make them truly scary. Even the opening credits deflates much of the tension that was suggested in the opening scene. It's strange to consider that this film was made by the same people who made the other two movies, which boasted genuine scares, great photography and strong performances. This has none of that and gives credence to the belief that the third part of a trilogy (or series) is always the worst.

The "Tomie" Series ... in Capsule Form

Tomie (1998)
Original Title: 富江
Translation: Tomie

Starring: Mami Nakamura, Miho Kanno, Yoriko Douguchi, Tomorowo Taguchi, Kenji Mizuhashi
Director: Ataru Oikawa

First film in a franchise of eight--nine if you count the mini-series that was later packaged as a film-- movies based on a manga by Junji Ito. The premise revolves around a girl, Tomie, who is both enchantingly beautiful and immortal, and whose mere presence (not to mention flirtatious manner) drives men to murder and madness. In this first film, we follow a college girl, Tsukiko, who is taking a photography class during her summer vacation. Tsukiko has some selected amnesia revolving an unexplained accident a few years before, and is seeing a psychiatrist in hopes of reviving her memories. Meanwhile, the new tenant in her apartment building is taking care of what appears to be a severed human head...

Whatever this film's pedigrees are, it's not a particularly well-constructed or even spooky movie. There are several parallel plot strands, most of which never come together in any meaningful way. This is especially true for the subplot involving Tsukiko's boyfriend Yuiichi having an affair with her best friend, Kaori. Detective-Inspector Exposition hangs around just to do that: spout off exposition, but never actually contributes to what's going on in the present. At first it looks like the Psychiatrist is going to do some investigating of her own, but in the end, she's just a non-entity. At no point before the climax does Tsukiko ever realize that she's in any kind of danger, so there's no gradual feeling of dread there. Lots of disturbing stuff happens offscreen and/or is completely unexplained: Just how did Kaori end up in Tomie's apartment? At what point did Tomie bewitch the landlord? What exactly were the circumstances involving the deaths of Yuiichi's co-workers? And where is Tsukiko's mother, whom she is always talking about?

Tomie: Another Face (1999)
Original Title: 富江 アナザフェイス
Translation: Tomie Another Face

Starring: Runa Nagai, Akira Shirai, Chie Tanaka
Director: Toshiro Inomata

Second entry in the franchise is actually three episodes from a TV anthology series edited into a single film. In the first story, Tomie (the gorgeous Runa Nagai) shows up at school after having been found dead by authorities some days before. She tries to get back together with her former boyfriend, but his ex-girlfriend stands in her way... In the second story, a photographer who's in a creative funk meets Tomie, who's working as a go-go dancer of sorts at a bar. She reminds me him of a girl he was infatuated with years before. She agrees to be his muse, but when the photos are developed... Finally, a businessman is about to ask his girlfriend, Tomie, to marry him. But then a mysterious man, a former autopsy doctor, shows up and tells him the truth about his love...

Most people dismiss this on account of its production values and acting. As beautiful as Runa Nagai is--especially when she dons a yipao in the second episode (yowza!)--her voice is high pitched and kinda annoying. Like a parody of the stereotypical child-like Japanese girl voice. My main problem is that the finale of the third episode, which is framed as a huge twist, goes against the "rules" for Tomie as established in the other films and Junji Ito's manga. And if you consider it for more than a few seconds, you'd have to assume that she would have Grey Goo'd the world decades earlier. I do like that it establishes Tomie as being the personification of narcissism, as if Pandora had opened her box and the demon of narcissistic behavior took the form of a hot Asian girl with a mole below her left eye.

Tomie Replay (2000) 
Original Title: 富江 replay
Translation: Tomie Replay

Starring: Sayaka Yamaguchi, Mai Hōshō, Yōsuke Kubozuka, Kenichi Endo, Shun Sugata
Director: Fujiro Mitsuishi

The second follow-up--following a 3-part anthology series that was packaged and released to theaters--to Tomie is more of a horror movie than the first and fifth entries, beginning with a horrific opening scene of a medical team trying to remove a tumor from the stomach of a young girl, only to discover that said tumor is the living head of our titular character (played this time by Hôshô Mai)! In the following days (or weeks), the surgical team goes crazy and the head surgeon/hospital director disappears. From there on out, the director's daughter, Yumi (Sayaka Yamaguchi) investigates her father's disappearance with the help of Fumihito (Yosuke Kubozuka), whose friend went insane after brings a fully-grown Tomie back to his pad

The first film was a badly-structured mix of mystery and teen drama, with Tomie's face being obscured until her seduction of an important male character in the third act. There isn't much mystery about who Tomie is or why she's dangerous, so new director Fujiro Mitsuishi plays up the horror elements (and interestingly enough, plays down the sexual ones) this time. There is a bit of a mystery in terms of what exactly happened to Yumi's father, which leads to a number of creepy moments. The film suggests that Tomie is the J-horror equivalent of Drexler's Grey Goo, although I don't think that angle will be explored until later installments. But it does explain how this movie could be set in the same universe as Tomie while having nothing to do with the events from that one. IMDB reviews suggest that this is the best entry in the franchise.

Tomie Re-birth (2001) 
Original Title: 富江 re-birth
Translation: Tomie re-birth

Starring: Miki Sakai, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Masaya Kikawada, Kumiko Endô, Shugo Oshinari, Shin Kusaka
Director: Takashi Shimizu

The fourth entry in the series is interesting in which it jettisons all elements of mystery from the story and features a more-focused plot that can best be described as a "Vengeful ex-girlfriend" story, but with horrific overtones. The film opens with a talented artist, Hideo (Shugo Oshinari), painting a picture of Tomie (Miki Sakai), our resident narcissistic Lorelei (filtered through Reptilicus). She destroys the painting when he finishes, prompting him to slit her throat with a painter's knife in a fit of anger. With the help of his two friends, Shunichi (Masaya Kikawada) and Takumi (Satoshi Tsumabuki), Hideo disposes of Tomie's body...albeit not for long. She shows up a few days later at a party and drives Hideo to suicide, and then exacts her revenge against the other two by inserting herself their lives and turning them upside-down.

Notable for being Takashi Shimizu's directorial effort immediately preceding Ju-On: The Grudge, his entry is just as violent as the other ones, but decidedly less creepy than the previous Tomie Replay. Miki Sakai plays her Tomie less as the seductress from the first film or the cynical man-hater from Tomie Replay, but more as a master manipulator hidden behind a thick veneer of kawaii. The movie doesn't do much to further the Tomie lore, except that it posits that Tomie is less Reptilicus and more John Carpenter's The Thing, in that exposure to just a few of her cells (or strands of hair) can infect and possess someone.

Tomie: Forbidden Fruit (2002) 
Original Title: 富江 ・最終章～禁断の果実～
Translation: Tomie - Final Chapter: Forbidden Fruit

Starring: Nozomi Andō, Aoi Miyazaki, Jun Kunimura, Ryota Saito, Tetsu Watanabe
Director: Shun Nakahara

Fifth entry in the long-running film series based on Junji Ito's popular manga. The gist of the story is that there's a pretty young girl named Tomie. She is a self-centered, manipulative narcissist who is apparently irresistible to men. She ultimately drives them to insanity and ultimately murder. However, Tomie is also immortal, so she always comes back to life to terrorize other families while her murderers usually end up in asylums, prison or killing themselves.

In this film, a young girl named Tomie (Aoi Miyazaki) is a loner who is bullied at school, whose dad (Jun Kunimura, of Godzilla Final Wars and Shin Godzilla) is emotionally distant and whose mother is dead. Tomie befriends another girl named Tomie (Nozomi Andoh), who may be the same young girl that her dad carried a torch for as an adolescent, before his friend dismembered her and hung himself. Tomie #2 starts coming onto to dad, promising him that they may be together forever...but only if he kills his daughter first.

The film is more a drama with some horrific touches. I kinda liked the scenes of the two Tomie girls interacting, even though evil Tomie's narcissism is evident from the start. The film loses its footing in act two. The whole bit about Tomie #1 taking care of Tomie #2's head as it grows back into a body, reminds me of a blackly comic version of Deadpool played completely seriously. The climax is not as exciting as it should be, save a brief scene where the crazed dad unwittingly solves Tomie #1's bully problems. The ending is kind of happy, in that it implies that all characters get what they want without it having to be at the expense of the other's life.

Tomie: Beginning (2005) 
Original Title: 富江 BEGINNING
Translation: Tomie Beginning

Starring: Rio Matsumoto, Asami Imajuku, Kenji Mizuhashi, Akifumi Miura, Yoshiyuki Morishita
Director: Ataru Oikawa

The sixth entry in the series was the first one to be shot on video and not released to theaters. Director Oikawa from the first Tomie returns to direct this prequel to his own contribution the franchise, which tells the story behind the class photo that Detective-Inspector Exposition was always babbling about in the first one. Tomie (played this time by Rio Matsumoto, probably the most attractive actress to play Tomie thus far) shows up at a high school and immediately causes havoc. All the boys (and the teacher, Mr. Takagi) all fall head over heels for Tomie, while the girl clique instantly takes a massive disliking for her. Tomie befriends a girl named Reiko Matsuhara (Asami Imajuku), who becomes something of a support for her.

Like most of the Tomie films, the film isn't really scary. There is some graphic violence, including a severed here and an infamous bit (I assume taken from the manga) where the class joyfully dismembers Tomie's curse. The film suffers from too many "important" events--Tomie's murder and the subsequent cases of insanity and suicide--taking place offscreen. Those are the sorts of things I'd like to see and not just hear in narration.

Tomie: Revenge (2005) 
Original Title: 富江 REVENGE
Translation: Tomie Revenge

Starring: Hisako Shirata, Minami Hinase, Anri Ban, Hitoshi Kato, Shoji Shibuya, Itsuko Suzuki
Director: Ataru Oikawa

Seventh entry in the franchise is a DTV film and generally considered the weakest of the bunch. A doctor at a small mountain village hospital runs into a naked girl (Anri Ban) in the forest. The girl is unhurt and the doctor follows her to an isolated cottage inhabited by some of Tomie's male admirers and an unconscious girl. The girl is taken back to civilization, but is missing her memory of how she ended up at the cottage. The doctor, a single lady, takes a liking to her and even considers adopting her...until one evening Tomie's goons show up at the hospital.

Tomie doesn't really show up until the end, where she starts making (to quote an IMDB reviewer) SCUM Manifesto speeches. Although the Tomie in Tomie Replay was also a man-hater, this one feels false and forced, mainly because we haven't seen her interact with anyone up to that point. Moreover, the most we'd seen of her was through a camcorder tape showing her ordering her male admirers to kill an innocent young woman, so WTF? Also, the climax involves neither the rescued girl or the female doctor, but hinges on the sudden revelation that one of the male cast members has actually been holding a torch for Tomie, despite there being NO SCENE to establish that he'd even had any contact with her in the first place...and all this seconds after the revelation that there's a second Tomie who's feeding off the entrails of one of the male followers, zombie-style. These two events are happening within a few feet of each other, but the script focuses on the former and COMPLETEY FORGETS about the latter. WTF? And the final scenes are so completely random that I can't help but think that the entire script was cobbled together from ideas at a stage 1 brainstorming session.