Tomie

Yes, I am definitely old enough to remember the J-Horror boom around the turn of the millennium, saw Ring and Ring 2 on a double-bill at the cinema, then witnessed the explosion of the genre to the point of oversaturation and eventual collapse, most noticeable in Tartan going bust, and it’s Asia Extreme (to be fair a catch-all for many types of film) releases suddenly being scattered to the winds. Many of those old releases have been picked up by other distributors since, and some films let’s be honest have fallen into well-earned obscurity. Interesting then that Arrow decided to pick up and put out Tomie, released in the same year, 1998, as Ring and based on a manga by Junji Ito, whom even I’ve heard of despite my manga knowledge being on par with my understanding of baseball.

Would Tomie then be one of those films that perhaps should have languished in obscurity (even if to my knowledge never previously released) or be a welcome addition to the J-Horror cannon?

Young insomniac student, Tsukiko (Mami Nakamura), spends her days taking photographs and receiving hypnotherapy at Dr. Hosono’s (Yoriko Douguchi) clinic, to uncover the hole in her memories from three-years prior. Her boyfriend, Yuuichi (Kota Kusano) isn’t sure if he wants to be in a band or be a chief, but seems listless. But what does that matter when the student that moves in downstairs seems to have a strange visitor with him in a paper bag? Or when Detective Harada (Tomoro Taguchi) is investigating Tsukiko’s past that includes a young woman, Tomie (Miho Kanno), who appears to have been murdered? Murdered, time and time again.

Tomie’s opening is effective and sets out its stall very well, a shambling young man with an injured eye, a paper bag the contents of which he is trying to protect all wrapped up in a bath of distorted sound. Tomie, and it’s writer/director Ataru Oikawa (writer of Door), is clearly going for mood, for discomfort and not for cheap thrills. When approaching horror films I know what interests me and what doesn’t: gore porn or deaths where the how they die is more important than the why. If that’s your thing that's fine, but it's not mine and not what I want to see, and anyone wanting gore porn will not find it in Tomie. It’s very much a mood piece, it is cinema of unease, as interested in its characters as it is with understanding who or what Tomie may be. There are no jump scares (which used in moderation is fine, too many films use them incessantly and lazily), so Tomie really fell into my arc. Having spent 90-minutes with the film, I struggled to understand why it had not been released earlier; this felt like a real sleeper but maybe what appealed to me about the film might also be what could have set it apart from others to make it a little less enticing to distributors ‘back in the day’. Much of the film is about creating ever-increasing tension where often not a lot happens on screen, and it is the interweaving characters that start to build the questions in the mind as to where the film is going that hooks you. True, we have an idea quite early on where it will go, once Detective Harada enters; in many ways he lays out the film’s narrative before us, because he describes Tomie, describes some of her history, and so the film can only really go in one direction and so it is really to the credit of the film that this never distracts us, maybe in the way that it doesn’t in the best episodes of Columbo, where knowing the murderer is superfluous because it’s the characters and the journey that matter.  

That said there are effective, eerie moments of horror and horror in arguably the truest sense of being not about blood or violence or making you jump but awful reality of moments, or images that unsettle, whether this is whatever is in the paper bag accidentally eating and spitting out a cockroach – a moment you can see coming and makes you queasy, or the ever slightly growing, slightly out of vision doll-like form that seems to be wrongly sized, being too young to be so spite-filled. Again, it’s all cinema of the unease, there to unsettle, sometimes to appall but it is the why of something being appalling that matters.  

For all that when we meet Tomie, and Miho Kanno’s performance as her is disturbing, it’s true that the film never has a defining moment like Sadako climbing out the television in Ring, but this never mattered to me. In part this is because of the performances, though I’ve seen some people hang on that of Kanno, it’s easy to overlook how important Mami Nakamura is as Tsukiko. Much of the film  falls onto her shoulders, and many of the early disturbing images fit as well with her face as that of Kanno’s as Tomie. Also, as a character she is sympathetic. Layer onto  two slightly off-kilter roles, Tomoro Taguchi, yes, he of Tetsuo The Iron Man and Body Hammer, as Detective Harada. Taguchi knows how to play his character so that he sets you slightly on edge. A role that could be a bit of a narrative vehicle is imbued with Taguchi’s ability to know how to play to the audience. And Yoriko Douguchi, as the ever smoking Dr. Hosono, is the same, maybe no surprise when I realised she is the same actor who years before appeared at the erotic pearl diver in Tampopo and the protagonist in Bumpkin Soup (aka The Excitement of the Do-Re-Mi-Fa Girl – which is very possibly by the time this review is live announced as one of Third Window’s next set of releases); Douguchi seems to possess the face of someone who can sense what is going on with Tsukiko even if she doesn’t necessarily know what the ‘what’ actually is.  

Going into Tomie I’ll be honest I was expecting a middling film and came out of it suitably impressed. It may perhaps be a bit slow for some, and for those that want blood there is little here; but for those that impressed by mood, performances and creeping unease, Tomie is an excellent example of that genre and I feel when it comes to horror we could do with more films like this, that are willing to risk it on mood and feel, as it’s easy to come undone, and Tomie always puts you subtly on edge, even in its domestic scenes.  

Considering there are at least eight other Tomie films, it will be interesting to see if Arrow release any more, though I suspect you’ll be best served with this first one in the series.