Tomie (1999)
Written and directed by Ataru Oikawa

Tomie is a sort of Twin Peaks-ish psychological thriller about a young woman coming to terms with the demon child inside her. Tsukiko can't sleep, and undergoes hypnotherapy to illuminate gaps in her memory left by some traumatic event from her adolescence, which may have entailed her witnessing a murder, causing one, or performing one. Meanwhile, nearsighted Detective Harada is trying to crack the bizarre case of a girl named Tomie, who is reported to have been found murdered every few years for more than a century, yet no body is ever found, and no evidence is ever produced.

The opening sequence sets expectations high, with an amazingly surreal image straight out of Luis Buñuel, but from there it bogs down in plot convolutions and loose ends that don't ever seem to come together. Like a lot of these Japanese horror flicks, it hinges on a huge twist at the end, which in this case is something you probably saw coming about 15 minutes into the film.

The mood is tense, the soundtrack is excellent, and a few scenes are sexy in a nicely twisted sort of way. But given the high boredom factor, the anticlimactic ending doesn't give Tomie the propulsion it needs to be really cool. Apparently the Japanese disagree, as Tomie seems to have spawned about as many sequels as Hellraiser … though given young Japan's 100-page-manga-a-month appetite for violent, gothy weirdness, I suppose this shouldn't surprise me.

Review by La Fée