Tomie





Tomie (1999) is another title in the new wave of Japanese horror films that followed in the wake of Ringu (1998). This particular movie looks like it was shot on the cheap, with few locations and minimal special effects. The central idea is interesting, but the movie can’t figure out a satisfying conclusion so it devolves into a series of nonsensical plot developments.

Tsukiko is college student who can’t sleep. She’s going to a psychiatrist, who hypnotizes Tsukiko every session in an attempt to bring to the surface a repressed memory Tsukiko has about some incident that happened during high school. Repressed high school memories-- boy, Tsukiko's lucky.

Meanwhile the strange guy who lives downstairs from Tsukiko has a severed head in a box (he found it on the street in plastic bag) which he feeds and cares for. Before long the head has grown into Tomie, a beautiful young woman that all men fall instantly in love with. What, did you think this was Eraserhead or something?

Free to do as she pleases, Tomie gets a job at the restaurant where Tsukiko's boyfriend Saiga works, seducing everyone but Saiga and forcing them to kill each other in an offscreen bloodbath. Free to concentrate on just Tsukiko and Saiga we find out that, yes, Tomie has something to do with Tsukiko's repressed memories.


Tomie had a good head on her shoulders... and another in the bag in her hands.

Much like Ringu, Tomie is never explicit about who or what Tomie is. She may be a demon, she may be a mutation, or she may just be a figment of someone's imagination. Without much plot (my synopsis covers up to the last ten minutes of the film) and few scares Tomie is not terribly satisfying. There have been several sequels, the most immediate of which, Tomie Replay (2000), looks much higher budget.

Posted: Wed - April 21, 2004 at      

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