Tomie: Another Face

If you like lots of special effects, fast paced story lines, and lots of startle moments, this is NOT the movie for you. If you've seen the first Tomie this is a lower budget version of that with a sort of made for TV feel. I kind of liked it a little better than the first. I felt I understood what was going on more and it was more spooky somehow. But the people I watched it with didn't like it so much. They felt that nothing really happened.

If you have by any chance seen Boogiepop and Others, this movie is incredibly similar to that. It's separated into different stories,there are very few effects until the very end, and the cinematography is strangely off, but at the same time there's more of an emphasis on the story and the more you pay attention the more you get out of it.

You'll probably never see this in a theater. It's a scary movie that's not all that scary, an intellectual horror movie that isn't hard to understand, it can work on several levels or not at all. Me, I like odd movies and I don't mind a few imperfections, especially when they add to the oddness, but if you aren't quite the weirdophile I am you may want to steer clear of this.

Tomie: Another Face isn't a feature film but three episodes made for Japanese television cut into one single movie. This film is much less intriguing than the first feature film and only interesting for avid collectors and fans of the franchise. While the second episode shows some promise, the first is just above average while the third is simply uninteresting.

The first episode is about a high school love triangle. Tomie was brutally murdered and her boyfriend is still deeply saddened by the tragic events. His former girlfriend wants to win him back and starts getting in touch with him again. One day however, Tomie is back at school as if nothing had happened. The fateful love triangle soon leads to another tragedy. On the positive side, this first episode is short and concise, has an intriguing atmosphere reminiscent of high school horror movies and ends with a creative twist. On the negative side, the acting performances are quite stiff and the camera work is equally static.

The second episode tells the story of a photographer who can't forget a beautiful woman he photographed ten years ago in his hometown. He has since become obsessed with the beautiful lady and returns to his town in order to find her. He is stunned when he meets a young woman who looks very similar to her in a shady bar and asks her to be his model and muse. The photographer realizes too late that something is amiss when he develops the pictures he took of the young lady as tragedy strikes on numerous occasions. The second episode was the most intriguing one of the three. It had diversified locations, a few mild horror elements and a few minor twists and turns. The opening minutes slightly overstayed their welcome and the acting performances were at times overacted.

The third episode tells the story of a naive man who is proposing to his girlfriend in a park when they suddenly get attacked by a man with an eye patch. The couple manages to escape but the fiancee asks the naive man to kill the perpetrator for her if they ever cross his path again. The man reluctantly agrees as his fiancee even buys a knife for him and menaces to leave him if he isn't able to protect her. He meets the man with the eye patch again and the mysterious man overpowers and kidnaps the naive man. He then tells him an incredible story about his fiancee. The protagonist must decide whom to trust and make a crucial choice. This episode is the least intriguing of the three. It has one minor twist towards the end but most of the story is quite predictable and at times even boring. Even though the acting performances are probably the best in this episode, the story itself lacks inspiration.

In the end, this short collection of three television episodes is entertaining and worth to be watched once for fans of the franchise. However, the episodes aren't too memorable and suffer from amateurish acting performances, a lack of scary moments and stiff camera work. Tomie: Another Face is only for die-hard fans of the franchise.

TOMIE: ANOTHER FACE (1999) 7/10 72 minutes Director - Toshiro Inomata Cast – Runa Nagai, Akira Hirai

Tomie: Another Face is the V-cinema version of the long running Tomie series based on Junji Ito's magna. This would be the director Inomata's only work behind the camera. This low budget J-horror attempt beats the previous and later forays into the character. This is similar to the Ju-On series where the J-cinema adds to the overall creepiness. It is an anthology that has three stories linked together by a man who is hunting down Tomie after having a ghostly encounter in a morgue (the third story). J-horror was still in its infancy when this came out and they were still experimenting with the imagery. Nagai captures the Lolita aspect the character very well and the movie can be seen as a warning with getting involved with young girls. In the second segment where the photographer meets up with Tomie, kills her and then comes back to life, in the scene in the car where her hand reaches from the back seat is very effective. Takashi Shimizu would use this again in Ju-On the Grudge 2 (2003) and the concept of multiplying Tomies (substituting Kayakos) in Ju-On the Curse 2 (2000). Incidentally Shimizu would take over the reins in the next installment Tomie Rebirth (the best of the cinema versions).

Runa Nagai plays Tomie, the girl who will not die, in this three story anthology that ramps up the creepy factor of the original but does not have significant horror film juice to it. In the first, Tomie is killed and comes back when her boyfriend, whom she wanted to break up with anyway, wants to move on. The second is about a photographer who comes back to a place ten years later to find the ideal girl to photograph like the one he took pictures of then (guess who?). The third has other men after her who will do anything she says. If you are a fan, you'll like it, as Tomie came from a manga. Otherwise, its only passable. Runa Nagai is fine, she is a combination of pretty and forbidding, but it could have been better.

A shot-on-video anthology released just months after the original film, TOMIE: ANOTHER FACE screams cash-in. It turns out to be an absolutely pitiful film that never overcomes the constraints of a non-existent budget, offering poor writing, direction and acting that neither grabs nor interests.

Of the three stories collected here, the first seems to pass by quickly without beginning or end; the second has a little more style but is mostly without merit; the last is the most explicit in terms of (poor) special effects but never feels like more than Z-grade nonsense. It's difficult to fault Runa Nagai as Tomie and it's better than REIGN IN DARKNESS, but those are the only "good" things I have to say about it.