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Kuchisake-Onna
Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman
Slit-Mouthed Woman
Japan 2007
produced by Kayako Hanamura, Shuntaro Kanai, Hirokazu Kokago, Nobumasa Miyazawa, Takafumi Ohashi, Saori Yabe, Yushimitsu Yoshitsuru for Tornado Film, For-Side.com, Twin Co, Memory Tech, earl Grey Film
directed by Koji Shiraishi
starring Eriko Sato, Haruhiko Kato, Chiharu Kawai, Rie Kuwana, Miki Mizuno, Kazuyuki Matsuzawa, Kaori Sakagami, Sakina Kuwae, Yuto Kawase, Ryoko Takizawa, Hiroto Ito, Yurei Yanagi, Rio Nakamura, Koichiro Nichi, Ayu Kanesaki, Mei Tanaka, Saaya, Aoi Shimoyama
written by Naoyuki Yokota, Koji Shiraishi, music by Chika Fujino, Gan Wano, special makeup effects by Akiteru Nakada
Slit-Mouthed Woman
review by Mike Haberfelner
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Available on DVD! To buy, click on link(s) below and help keep this site afloat (commissions earned) |
Always make sure of DVD-compatibility!!!
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There is an urban legend that a slit-mouthed woman (Miki Mizuno) -
wearing a surgical mask to hide her mouth - is roaming town, kidnapping
little children and cutting their mouths open from ear to ear to look like
her. Teacher Kyoko (Eriko Sato) has to learn these legends are all too
real when the slit-mouthed woman tears one of her students, Mika (Rie
Kuwana), from her arms and takes her with her. Desperate to find the girl
again, Kyoko teams up with her colleague Noboru (Haruhiko Kato), who has
some kind of psychic link with the slit-mouthed woman and who later
confesses the woman is his mother (or rather her ghost), whose face he has
cut up in self-defense when he was still a child. Ultimately he even had
to kill her ... Thanks to Noboru's psychic link, he and Kyoko can track
down the slit-mouthed woman, save a boy from her claws and kill her - but
in death, the slit-mouthzed woman turns into an innocent mother of two, as
it now becomes apparent the fiend can possess people. Soon, a bunch of
victims of the slit-mouthed woman are found, killed and/or mutilated, but
Mika remains missing. Having collected enough rumours and hearsay, Kyoko and Noboru
soon figure the woman must be hiding out (and keep Mika) at Noboru's
own abandoned childhood home, and when the two of them get there, they
find Mika in the basement, alive and unharmed ... but then the
slit-mouthed woman finds them, and soon she has overome them. Then she
prepares to kill Mika, but fortunately, Mika's mum (Chiharu Kawai)
interferes just in time, and in a struggle that ensues, the slit-mouthed
woman is killed .... but no, the dead body turns out to be Mika's mum
while the slit-mouthed woman is suddenly alive in her stead. Now Noboru
figures he has to slit her throat to kill her for good, but as the house
is already caving in, he knows it will be a suicide mission, but at least
Kyoko and Mika manage to escape. Noboru seems to have succeeded in
ridding the world of the slit-mouthed women ... but wait! The last scene
suggests that Kyoko has become the new slit-mouthed woman ... A
rather typical horror film from Japan: The story of the film is built on a
premise that's completely bizarre yet makes sense in the context of the
film, much emphasis is put on urban legends, atmospheric shots go hand in
hand with visceral scenes of mutilation, and so on and so forth. But as
typical as Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman is, as mediocre it is at
the same time. It's an ok (J-)horror flick, but it never exceeds above
being a formula movie, and as outrageous as some ideas seem to be
initially, as unoriginal does the film as a whole come across. That's not
to say Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman is a bad movie, it's just
absolutely nothing special, and you'll probably have forgotten all about
it in no more than a few days.
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