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.

This movie mixes elements from the Western tradition of Slasher movies along with a peculiar kind of creepiness so typical to Asian horror. An interesting combination that should have been much more successful. Unfortunately 'Kuchisake-onna' is overall mediocre and downward pedestrian at times. It fails whenever it adheres to clichés such as making sure that everyone confronting the villain in the grand finale is without weapons of any kind but there are a few redeeming points. The positive parts include the child abuse angle that pervades and drives the plot, the fact that the villain does not only lurk in dark shadowy places but actually acts in broad daylight and a possession story that is original.

With so much going on for it, it is a true shame that the movie manages to fall into tired recipes that do away with so much potential. After all, in a story in which the villain targets children is open to horror as perceived from their point of view. That approach would have elevated it from the usual supernatural thriller to something more unique. And the movie itself seems to be aware of this on occasion.

With some psychological bits and a decent slasher angle this is a movie that fans of the genre will probably find worth watching but it does have a limited appeal without being part of the elite in the competitive world of J-horror.

"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 !

Children tell the story of the slit-mouthed woman, a killer with a deformed face, surgical mask and very long scissors ready to slice up the kids while asking "Am I pretty?". As rumors of the woman spread, the panic in town grows and the rumors become true -- remarkably so, as they seem to come from nowhere. What is the origin of this killer?

Something about Asian horror is both appealing and distressing. I can't pinpoint it. The films are different enough from American films to give a special feel to the viewer for when we've had enough of the classic slasher. Yet, no matter how different one Asian film is from another, they seem to all co-exist in the same universe. This film is no exception: while not relying on the same techniques as "Pulse" or "The Grudge" or even "The Ring", there's a sense that we haven't left those worlds too far behind.

Like many Asian horror films, there is a sense of the supernatural here. American horror often tries to explain its stories in a reasonable way (even when the villains are of an other-worldly nature). Asian horror is less likely to do so. Here is another example of that. As the film progresses, we learn more about the slit-mouthed woman, but we never really understand how or why she does what she does.

I enjoyed the rumors element. I think this was very clever and if the film were longer, I wish they'd have gone into this more and made the plot and background deeper. At one point, a child is asked where the slit-mouthed woman lives and she responds in a house with a red roof on the hill. Despite having no reason to know this (she never saw the house or even the woman), the rumor invariably turn out to be true. I found this very interesting.

I also liked the makeup. Having recently seen "Pan's Labyrinth" I saw how cool it was to have a person with a mouth slit open to their ear (and, by the way, if you haven't seen this film you really must). This film makes it the selling point of the movie, not just a brief scene -- the way the woman is shown with the mouth and dead eyes is pretty cool. I didn't find her particularly scary or creepy, but an interesting villain just the same.

Perhaps some of the film is lost in translation. A key aspect of the film is that the kids think the woman says "Am I pretty?" and later we are told she says "Aim my neck." I am under the impression that whatever the original wording was, these two phrases are even more similar to create a parallel. Here, the words "pretty" and "neck" are a bit of a stretch. But it slid.

If you like Asian horror, I suggest checking this one out. The copy I watched was pre-release, so the picture wasn't fully touched up and there were numbers counting across the top. Once the official DVD is out, I suspect this will be a bit crisper and the sounds even creepier (maybe like the comb noise from "The Grudge"). Either way, I liked it, and it was a good vacation from the same old teenagers in the woods movie.