| Plot: After surgery is performed on a little girl's enlarged stomach, the medical staff is driven insane by the finding of Tomie Kawakami's living head. As she is reincarnated once again for another round of murder and madness--the director's daughter, Yumi, and Takeshi are hot on her trail to figure out how to get rid of her before things get worse. But apparently they didn't read the original movie's tagline too well: Tomie will not die! Review: I know that I've said some nasty things about the original Tomie, but in its defense it had a decent concept. Tomie Kawakami can never grow up, never truly die, she drives men insane, and death follows her wherever she goes. But it was so damn slow and we barely got to see any of her. So why did I pick up Tomie: Replay? Dunno, I guess it was just because it was there. However, Replay is a better horror movie than the original Tomie ever was. While it does move at a slow pace, it flows good and there's enough horror onscreen and wacky visual effects to grab our attention. Replay keeps the basics of the original and adds a few twists here and there to keep things fresh. First of all, Tomie takes a lot more punishment in this one than ever before. She gets decapitated...and decapitated again, burned alive, hacked up via saw, and burned by acid. So needless to say there's more gore here than in the original. However, one thing that bugged me was that Tomie still had absolutely no motive for what she was doing and all the guys once again flip out over her. But then again I guess that's the point they were trying to make, Tomie has no motive for what she's doing, she's just being a bitch for no apparent reason. Also, Tomie is no longer played by Miho Kanno, but instead played by Mai Hosho. In my opinion, Mai made for a much more interesting Tomie than Miho ever did. Mai's Tomie is somewhat sympathetic, but in the ends she still turns out to be a psycho-bitch. She tries to understand just what exactly was her life before it was taken away and for a while becomes apathetic to everything, but it's not too long before she turns back into the old Tomie we know. She looks a bit older than Miho Kanno, but I guess you can't get two actresses that'll look exactly alike. Anyways, she pulled her weight during the film and definitely carried it. Sakaya Yamaguchi does a decent job as Yumi, but her acting's nothing noteworthy nor is the rest of the cast's outside of Hosho. Tomie is what kept this movie alive, unlike the original. Sadly, Tomie's background was never delved into. I know she's supposed to be mysterious, but I wanted to know at least something about her. At least they took the time to give her a new and interesting "virus" angle. You see, if her blood mingles with yours in any way, you become her puppet and it's not pretty. Also it seems there can be multiple Tomies, like how some worms when cut in half squirm around and become new worms. The concept was pretty interesting, but it was never followed up. There weren't many actual scares in the movie nor any real sense of dread, but it was entertaining nonetheless Tomie: Replay is a much tighter film overall than the original Tomie ever could hope to be, so if you didn't like the original than you might like to take a look at Replay. It's at least worth a rental in my opinion, but only worth one viewing. |
| Rating: **1/2 |
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| Review by Jim |