| Plot: After a police investigation into the grisly murder of high schooler Tomie Kawakami, it's revealed that there's been a series of murders dating back to the Meiji era in which all the victims have the same name and description as Tomie Kawakami. Meanwhile, Tsukiko is an art student that takes hypnotherapy to remember what happened between her and Tomie when they were friends...and to make things worse, the man living in the apartment below her is taking care of a severed head that soon grows into a teenage girl calling herself Tomie Kawakami. Just how many decapitations can this one supernatural girl take? Review: When I popped Tomie into my DVD player, I was looking forward to it immensely after seeing the dark trailer for it and having listening to its haunting opening theme. After I took it out at somewhere around 2a.m., I threw the case over my shoulder and was thinking that I should stop seeing Japanese horror movies based on mangas by Junji Ito. I should've learned my lesson from Uzumaki, which in my opinion was less than stellar. At least Uzumaki had an excuse because it was surreal and interprative a movie as you could get, bordering on not having any actual story at all. At least Uzumaki had some neat visuals, computer-generated effects not being one of them. I peeked at the manga of Uzumaki which looked to have more depth and more scares than the movie, so maybe it was a bad manga-to-movie translation? I haven't seen the Tomie manga, but maybe it's the same case all over again. As to what the movie actually does right is pretty hard to say. There was so much inane dialogue I don't know where to begin, most of which didn't even involve Tomie. This made maybe 25% of Tomie's dialogue relevant to the storyline. And as far as a thriller or horror movie is concerned, Tomie is neither one. The film has no sense of pacing and is sloooooooooow as they come, things don't pick up until maybe the last ten minutes, so by this point we don't really care or are too uninterested/tired to be scared/surprised/shocked even though a vital plot point has just been told. There's no suspense and not much questioning to be had since the detective already knows Tomie's background and story, plus we hardly see Tomie until the ass end of the film. But by this time it's too late since Tomie looks like an average teenage girl so there's no scares to be had. So what is the point of naming a movie that's supposed to center around a demonic girl only to have her in the film for a few minutes and not actually be an imposing figure? This is a damn shame because there was so much material for the creators to work with to really crank up the tension and fear. Tomie is already an enigmatic figure, so the mystery aspect about her is already there, plus she can regenerate and has those creepy looking eyes (which she only uses for maybe a second or two). The makers of Tomie tried to make her come off as the scariest psycho-bitch you could ever meet, but she just comes off as a regular bitch. Yeah, she does a few mean things here and there, but nothing really outragous that can earn the title of "demonic." None of the characters were engaging, even Tomie managed to bore the hell out of me, and there's no chemistry whatsoever, not even in the scenes with Tomie and Tsukiko. On a supposed deeper level, Tomie represents the fear of adulthood, teenage fears, and blah-blah-blah. All this will go in one ear and out the other as you meditate on the subject for maybe a second or two. Stylistically, the film offers nothing new but instead just uses the same conventions and gritty Japanese camera we've grown accustomed to. My final verdict? Tomie offers no thrills, no chills, and no memorable moments other than when Tomie opens her eye in that plastic bag, but if you just wanted to see that all you have to do is look at the cover. For a film named after her, Tomie certainly is an uninteresting character with no real motivation behind what she does. Hell, why'd they even bother to call it Tomie, why not call it "Everybody except Tomie"? Granted there's more movies in the Tomie series that probably expand on the story, but as it stands Tomie is boring with nothing out of the ordinary. If you liked the manga, I say just stick to that and avoid this live-action version. |
| Review by Jim |
| Rating: *1/2 |
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