Kuchisake-onna

Kuchisake-onna is perhaps one of the most well known and "beloved" urban legend in Japan. It is essentially about a woman with a split mouth roaming around the streets kidnapping children on their way home. This perhaps was anticipated by many Japanese people since they finally got to see the classic monster in the silver screen, and it is still enjoyed and loved by many today. Though I enjoy this movie since there are quite a few scary moments, this is a movie that is very poorly made.

How the screenplay is lazily written is very evident from the way the characters are written. The two lead characters are the teachers of the school Kuchisake onna targets, and they are introduced as normal, flat characters. However, as the movie goes on, it feels like the screenwriters were finishing the script as they were shooting the movie and decided to cram in backstories for the teachers in the last minute. In addition, the screenwriters added Kuchisake onna herself a backstory. What they decided to do is make Kuchisake onna the mother of one of the lead teachers, and the way that is executed is literally like a your mama joke. Beyond that there are many unclear explanations on the rules of this Kuchisake Onna virus, which does not show any patterns and is just possesing random moms. If they could have just done a straight forward slasher movie without adding unnecessary back stories and depth to the characters and Kuchisake Onna herself, this could have been just a very enjoyable B grade horror movie. However by trying to be overly serious with a source material that works without seriousness, it backfired and just became plain silly.

But what absolutely kills this movie is the horrible acting. From the child actors to even the lead characters are played with underwhelming skills. It is clearly evident that the actors didn't take their roles seriously at all, and it feels like they were reading the script at the front of their face as they were shooting the movie. The only good performance was by Miki Mizuno who plays Kuchisake Onna. Overall, this is a movie that should have been better than it is, but is ruined by very poor acting and writing.

Kuchisake Onna is a solid horror film, which tries to impress with its creepy atmosphere, and interesting storyline.

The acting is ok, there are some good scares, and its quite bloody.

Unfortunately, a lot of potential has been wasted, otherwise this would have been a great horror film.

Total score: 6/10.

A town is haunted by the myth of a woman whose face has been mutilated in a very awesome looking fashion. She wears a mask over her mouth and shows up to people asking "Am I pretty?" Their answer almost always leads to their death.

I loved this movie. The story was different. I haven't seen anything too similar to it before. The story was interesting, even a bit touching at points. It never got laughable to me. The whole thing stayed pretty dark and serious. (I'm sure the horrific involvement of children in the story helped that...) The camera work was really slick. I loved the lighting and the atmosphere towards the end. It had a great pace. It moved fast, even by American standards. (This is surprising for an Asian flick.) The ghost was unique by Asian standards. (She didn't have the hair over her face, nor did her hair seem to be alive.) The woman with the sliced mouth was a very cool visual.

This has been one of my favorite Japanese horror films yet. Another big difference from most Asian films I've seen is that IT ACTUALLY MADE SENSE. Many Asian flicks like to have ambiguous endings that don't seem to have a definite meaning, so the audience can discuss their take on it. That, or the films are just made very bizarre, outlandish, and hard to follow. But this one actually made sense to me all the way through.

Most of what I've read say it's "average"... I'm sorry, but all of the really famous Asian horror flicks I've seen seemed to be very similar to each other... I'd call those "average". In my eyes, this shied away from Asian routines, (which are sadly becoming American ones now...).

I highly recommend this to any supernatural horror fan. I thought it was a great little ghost flick with a good story and some awesome eye-candy.

"The Slithmouthed Woman" was a nice new approach to Asian horror. It stands out from the endless sea of Asian horror movies that have ghost women in white dresses with black hair covering their eyes, and 90% of the movie shot in near complete darkness. "The Slithmouthed Woman" was quite the opposite, and that was a nice change of pace.

The story in "The Slithmouthed Woman" is about a woman with a mangled face (her mouth is slashed open) going around abducting and killing people. Just before she appears and drags you off, people will hear her saying "Am I pretty?" Now, being shot almost in nothing but daylight, "The Slithmouthed Woman" was really a nice change, because you got to see everything that was going on, and not kept in the dark by the lack of lighting. Plus, the movie here was more of a psychological horror movie, than it was a visual horror movie. Sure, the make-up and effects on the woman was really great, I just personally would have liked to see more of that mangled face. But still, done with moderation, it worked out well enough.

The acting in the movie was alright as well, I don't recall having seen the people here in other movies before, and still the people put on great enough performances.

However, "The Slithmouthed Woman" is a very predictable movie and you know how it will end early on in the movie. And also the story takes forever to go anywhere, and that was a notch down in the entertainment value. Had they opted to go with a more adrenaline-filled approach and more action, the movie had worked out all the better.

The idea and concept behind the story was really unique and well thought through, it just could have used another set of eyes on it to offer a different approach to the direction in which the movie went. But still, it wasn't a bad movie, not at all. If you like Asian horror movies and want to see something that isn't a mainstream ghost horror movie, like most of the Asian horror movies have a tendency to be, then "The Slithmouthed Woman" is well worth checking out.

Thought this movie was alright in my opinion, the plot is very well coordinated and despite the films obviously low budget it does well with what it's has! I would love to see this film as a bigger more money invested in project it could really develop into something more. Ending was a shocker by the way !