| Review by Jim |
| Rating: **1/2 |
| Plot: An art student disappears only to be found by his friends, Shunichi and Takumi, holding the blood-soaked corpse of his model...Tomie Kawakami. The friends decide to hide the body only to find that Tomie's still roaming around and toying with each of them. As the madness ensues, Takumi and his girlfriend Hitomi are drifting apart. Will they stay together long enough to find a way to get rid of Tomie for good? But lest we all forget...TOMIE WILL NOT DIE! (tm) Review: This is the third in the Tomie series, followed by a TV-movie and the final film. So since I've sat through over half of the series, I decided I might as well review 'em all. In any case, a helluva lot of progress has been made in the series just from Tomie to Tomie: Replay. The first one was a pretty boring flick with somewhat decent characters and the second was full-on horror with some good red goo and a neat virus angle. Then somewhere in the middle is Tomie: Rebirth, combining both aspects of the previous movies to make a pretty decent horror flick with some characters that actually carry some weight to them. Tomie gets more time onscreen here, and that's a good thing courtesy of Miki Sakai who gives the best performance thus far as Tomie. She's so mocking, so sweet looking, and of course is creepy in a robotic kind of way (plus the scenes with her beady monster eyes don't hurt either). Finally, we actually have a Tomie that accomplishes what the character was originally supposed to be: creepy. She just exudes creepiness and really brings out the Tomie character unlike the other actresses. Sadly, despite Miki Sakai her acting abilities, the whole "rebirth" angle was lost on me. Just what precisely did Tomie need Hitomi for? I don't know, I guess they just want to keep her an enigmatic figure until this movie series ends...but I personally think they should at least throw us some bits of information about Tomie. It was fine for the first two movies, but now it's getting a little old. Without a motivation it feels like she's just wandering around for no real reason and makes giving each movie a subtitle kind of pointless. Also the horror elements aren't as heavy, probably because it was scaled back for the love story. Tomie took quite a beating in the last movie, but here it's not as bad. She gets her head cut with a trowel, her head sawed off (what is it with them and decapitations?), and she gets burned. Rebirth has more gore than the original Tomie, but not as many gooey effects as Replay. Although there's a nifty little bit where Tomie's severed head sprouts some gross legs. So with the exception of Miki Sakai's performance as Tomie, this sounds like a regular Tomie movie, right? However, the horror elements are balanced nicely with the love story elements to create an engaging (but not remarkable) storyline. The movie could've been completely ruined if Takumi and Hitomi were written poorly or were acted poorly, but thankfully the both of them came together courtesy Satoshi Tsumabuki and Kumiko Endou. Both of them had chemistry and thankfully didn't over-play the onscreen drama. It was subtle relationship between the two that made it so engaging. Moreover, I actually rooted for the both of throughout the movie. However, it didn't add anything particularly new to the series...it was just the previous two films sewn together and with much better direction and acting. Rebirth didn't do anything to one-up the other Tomie movies, but in my opinion this far it's the best one next to Replay. If you've seen any of the other Tomie movies or are a Tomie comic book fan, I suggest you take a good look at Rebirth. |
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