Aoi (Yoshino Kimura) is a famous moviestar, but a family curse will
distort her appearance once she's reached the age of 29 - just like it
turned her mother into a monster she keeps locked up in the basement. Still,
until her birthday, she tries to make her daughters into stars. The
looming curse however causes her to act madder and madder, until she tries to
kill herself in a car accident. However, mysterious Orochi (Mitsuki
Tanimura), a girl with supernatural powers, saves her life ... but then
falls into a decade-long sleep herself. Decades later: Aoi is now the
monster locked up in the basement, and her daughters daughers Kazusa
(Yoshino Kimura again) and Lisa (Noriko Nakagoshi) have reached adulthood.
Older Kazusa panicks, because she will reach age 29 all-too-soon (the
curse only affects first-borns), which makes the atmosphere in their house
(they both still live in their mother's mansion) pretty tense. But Kazusa
has found a solution: She takes in Yoshiko (Mitsuki Tanimura again) as a
maid, but actually she just needs the girl for a blood transfusion,
figuring that the fresh blood will lift the curse. At the operating table
though, everything seems to go wrong, as Kazusa seems to be allergic to
the new blood, and ultimately, she kills her servant, threatens her sister
and burns her own face. There would be even more bloodshed, but by that
time, Orochi had awoken and made it to the mansion, where she manages to quiet everything down simply by her appearance (and likeness to
Yoshiko).
When she finds Yoshiko already drained of blood amd therefore though, she leaves again,
locking the two sisters in and leaving them to their own fate. As it
turns out, the blood transfusion has really lifted the curse from Kazusa
but transferred it to Lisa - but what good will it do Kazusa now after she
has burned her face ... Deliciously weird Japanese horror tale
that might not make all that much sense (and probably isn't even supposed
to - though I have to admit ro not knowing the manga it's based on),
instead presents the audience with a series of increasingly bizarre
situations. Don't espect this film to be a blood-and-gore fest like so
many other weird and bizarre Japanese shockers, rather a creepy mood-piece
that more than once defies conventional reason but follows its own
fascinating logic. Pretty cool.
|