Jeremy's Reviews Blog

Friday, September 01, 2006

Tomie (DVD)

This is a Japanese horror movie. Shockingly enough, it's not about those creepy little black haired ghosts that kill people for some silly reason. Instead, it's more of a mystery and psychological drama, almost.

It's mostly about this girl (college age, actually) who is seeing a psychiatrist. Apparently she can't remember a period of time several years ago. A period of time which she thinks involved an accident, but actually involved a murder, where her best friend (named Tomie) was killed. Anyway, she wants to get her memory back.

In the mean time, a creepy detective comes up to the psychiatrist, and asks her about the college student. He then gives details of a case. Of how a woman named Tomie Kasomething or other was killed, but the body mysteriously vanished. And that there are earlier cases of a woman with the same name (and appearance) who were also killed, but again, their bodies vanished.

This kind of kills any real mystery in the movie, but it's the way that it's told that is very good. It comes off as real (and in how a real person would try to explain it). That's probably the strong suit of the movie, the characterization is very good. The movie itself really isn't that scary. It's very slow paced until the end, where you finally see Tomie.


The woman who plays Tomie is very very creepy. If this were ever remade in the US, Paris Hilton would be a great pick - she has the souless, creepy look down pat.