A tip for you if you ever
visit Japan. Should a tall slim woman with long black hair and a face mask
come up to you and ask "Am I pretty?", your answer should be "yes". When
she takes off her face mask to reveal a mouth cut from corner to corner and
asks you "Am I still pretty?", you should answer "average" and run like hell.
According to the Urban Legend of the Kuchisake-onna or Slit-Mouthed Woman,
if you answer no to either question, she will kill you with her long-sharp
scissors - and if you answer yes to both questions, she will slit your mouth
as well. Running is your only option though in some versions, she is very
fast. It is said she is a ghost or a Yokai - an evil spirit that appears
from time to time and has the ability to possess women.
The Kuchisake-onna legend in Japan goes back a few hundred years to samurai
days. It was renewed in the 1970s when rumors began in a town that she had
been seen and it put the town into full panic. They organized adult supervision
to walk the children to school and back. This film plays on that but goes
a step further in showing us the Slit-Mouthed woman and her victims. Children.
This came in near the end of the J-Horror craze but in a sense J-Horror films
have been around since the end of WW2 with Kaiju and ghost stories. J-Horror
became a thing because the West suddenly took heed of it with The Ring. In
truth, the scariest thing about this film is motherly abuse. It isn't something
we see often in films and the acts of slapping and kicking their children
is horrific because it really exists. The Slit-Mouthed woman? Well, maybe.
It begins with rumors spread by children that one of them saw the woman in
the park. Fear begins to spread. Uneasiness. Parents tell their children
not to worry. She isn't real. And then children begin to disappear. Kidnapped
by a woman with a facemask on. Children are walked home. Teacher Yamashita
(played by Eriko Satô, who I did not recognize from Cutie, Honey or
Funuke) walks one girl home but Mika doesn't want to go with her mother.
She is being abused by her and the mother even tells her that she hopes she
will be taken by the Slit-Mouthed woman. She is. Right in front of Yamashita
who freezes in terror and then in a flashback we see she also abused her
child and is no longer allowed to see her. She and another male teacher decide
to investigate to find Mika.
Horrors lay ahead in the basement of a deserted home where the man used to
live. And was abused by his mother. There are some fine creepy moments in
the film and the woman when unmasked is certainly the thing of nightmares.
It is never really clear how the theme of mother-child abuse ties into the
narrative, but it streams through it like a strand of barbed wire. It is
directed by Kôji Shiraishi (Sadako vs Kayako and about 90 other straight
to video films) with a very small budget and drab surroundings but he does
the best he can with it.
