Tomie (Japan, 1999)

A traumatized young woman is trying to recover her memories with the help of a psychiatrist. During her hypnosis sessions, she repeats the name "Tomie" but is unable to recall where she knows it from.

Tomie is the first film in the longest Japanese horror series to date, with eight other films in the franchise. Based on the manga by Junji Ito, Tomie is a very creepy and disturbing film, though never as horrifying as its manga counterpart. Even though the series consists of nine movies, this first film is one of the better ones and definitely worthy of your attention. A good J-horror experience.

So what about all the other Tomie-movies? Well, here's my personal recap of the rest of the series:

Tomie: Another Face (1999) - Another Face features horrible acting and atrocious production values, and for some reason I got very annoyed at the girl playing Tomie. Not recommended.
Tomie: Replay (2000) - A huge improvement over Another Face, Replay digs deeper into the story but unfortunately isn't particularly scary. It was based on one of the more interesting chapters from the manga; "Basement".
Tomie - Re-birth (2001) - This one just didn't do it for me. Failed to scare me, failed to make me feel anything for the characters, and this film is really repetitive when Tomie comes back over and over again. Tomie dies in every film and is resurrected, but for some reason Re-birth just went to town with that idea and it's just not scary. It's pretty cool that it was directed by Takashi Shimizu (Ju-on), though he hasn't made anything good in a long, long time (so I guess it's not cool).
Tomie: Forbidden Fruit (2002) - I'm kind of torn on this one. It starts off almost as a J-drama about friendship? Then it turns into a very bizarre creature horror film with Tomie depicted as a huge meat potato and must be driven around in a baby stroller. So it's actually fun from time to time, and I also like the music (the soundtrack is always important to me).
Tomie: Beginning (2005) - This Tomie-film felt a bit too uneventful, and it almost had the feel of a student's film project. This series should be filled with horror gems, but instead we get something as mediocre as this. Where did the horror go?
Tomie: Revenge (2005) - I haven't seen all of it but it seemed fairly promising, actually.
Tomie vs Tomie (2007)  - Unfortunately I haven't found any working subtitles for this one.
Tomie: Unlimited (2011) - If you just can't get enough Tomie, here's another one for you. Better effects, but still not as scary as it should be. A fun B-horror flick that could work if you're in the mood for it.

Genre: Horror

Junji Ito: Master of Japanese Horror

It turns out I can't resist the urge to write something about one of my all time favorite contributors to the world of ultra bizarre Japanese horror. He comes up with the most freakish and nastiest stories I've ever seen, and yet I got nothing but love for this guy. Junji Ito is a manga artist and some of his most notable works include Gyo, Tomie and my personal favorite: Uzumaki. Those have all been adapted to the big screen, but Ito has been writing stories for many, many years so there's literally a ton of amazing stories left to read. How about Glyceride, where a whole house has been swallowed by grease and turns its inhabitants faces into disgusting pimple nightmares? Or about when people steps into human-shaped holes in the side of a mountain, only to emerge on the other side as something else in The Enigma of Amigara Fault.

Ito's stories are very easy to get into because for one, they're often pretty short, and secondly, almost all of them are so uncomfortably interesting and scary that you just have to see what happens next. Nearly all of his stories can easily be found online, so if you just read through some of them I won't blame you if you get completely hooked and MUST READ EVERYTHING (trust me, I've been there). I recommend the short story Fashion Model, where a group of film making students hires the wrong kind of lead for their movie. So many of Ito's stories are perfect nightmare fuel and if you, just like I have, been wondering what's happened to the once almighty Japanese horror scene, Ito is the answer to that. One influence I can see in his work is H.P. Lovecraft, in that his stories often involve a very grounded reality with ordinary people being exposed to horrors beyond their imagination and goes through personal breakdowns. 

As I've said, some of the stories have been adapted into movies (this is Awesome Asian Movies, after all). Gyo, a story where the fish starts to walk and invades Tokyo, became an animated project in 2012. Uzumaki and Long Dream both got the movie treatment in 2000, and Tomie was released in 1999 as the start of a long-running film series. Uzumaki, which has appeared on this blog before, tells the story of a small town where spirals are becoming the obsession of more and more people, and in Long Dream we meet a young man who's begun to have longer and longer dreams without being able to wake up. Ito always manages to win the readers with utterly gross imagery and really captivating, original stories. You'll wish more of the stories had been adapted into movies because some of this stuff is just beautifully horrific and deserves to be shown to more people than just manga readers.

Junji Ito is still drawing manga today, so be sure to check his new stuff out when you're done with his previous work. Hopefully we'll see another movie adaptation in the future (fingers extremely frikkin' crossed) but until that day comes, let's just enjoy all the slugs and ghosts, all the tall scary women with dark eyes and other stories that makes the majority of all new horror films look like kindergarten stuff.

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Uzumaki (2000)

Genre: Horror