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Released by: BCI Eclipse/Adness
Released on: 9/19/2006
Director: Ataru Oikawa/Toshiro Inomato/Tomijiro Mistuishi/Takashi Shimizu/Shun Nakahara
Cast: Miho Kanno, Mami Nakamura, Runa Nagai, Akira Hirai, Mai Hosho, Sakaya Yamaguchi, Miki Sakai, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Nazomi Ando, Aoi Miyazaki
Year: 1999/1999/2000/2001/2002
Reviewed By: Ian Jane on October 17, 2006.
The Movies:
While the five films in this set were put out by Adness a couple of years ago, this new boxed set, appropriately titled The Tomie Collection, collects the first five films in the series in one handy, low priced package that contains all the extra features that were available on those single disc releases. If you've already got those discs, you'll find nothing new here save for the fancy box but for those who haven't gotten into the Tomie films, this is an affordable and comprehensive way to make that happen.
DISC ONE - TOMIE (1999):
Based on the Manga by Junji Ito (who's work was also mined for Uzumaki and Kakashi a. k. a. Scarecrow) and directed by Ataru Oikawa, Tomie is a pretty weird little movie that, while at times quite confusing, proves to be worth a look and explores some interesting ideas and themes.
After we see a teenage boy toss a plastic bag containing a human head to the side of the road, we meet Tsukiko (Mami Nakamura). A young woman who has recently had to deal with some pretty harrowing issues in her past, Tsukiko is trying to rediscover her repressed memories from her younger days with the help of a psychiatrist named Doctor Hosono (Yoriko Douguchi). While she's under hypnosis, she continually repeats the name 'Tomie' over and over again, but once she's up, she has no idea what it means or where it came from.
While this is going on, a police detective discovers a string of nasty murders going on around town that are connected in a sense - Tomie has been a murder victim for the better part of three years now and the first time she/it was killed was while Tsukiko was in school. As they investigate things further, they find that Tomie is somehow able to regenerate and has a habit of turning her boyfriends against her before she is ultimately murdered.
Sound bizarre and confusing? Well, it is. Parts of it are pretty hard to unravel sometimes and the ending is still a bit of a puzzler even after watching it for the third time. It would probably help to have a familiarity with Junji Ito's Manga that the series is based on, but at the same time, the film is still able to maintain an odd and effective atmosphere of dread that goes a long way towards making it creepy even when you're not entirely sure what the Hell is going on.
It's far from a perfect film though - there are a couple of scenes where very little, if anything, is actually going on. Sometimes characters are just sitting around in rooms and not actually really doing anything. This can be a bit alienating at times, as it causes the film to move at a very languid pace, but overall the good outweighs the bad in the film and for Japanese horror buffs, it's worth a look.
DISC TWO - TOMIE: ANOTHER FACE (1999)
The second film in the series abandons the single story format of the first film and instead functions as more of a trilogy, each of the three tales centering around the titular character who just won't stay dead. It's also unique in that at seventy-two minutes in length it's considerably shorter than the other entries in the series.
The first of the three stories tells the tale of a young man who spends his days wallowing in sorrow after his girlfriend, Tomie, passed away. He's tried to move on but it just isn't happening and even the familiar touch of his ex-girlfriend isn't able to comfort him, at least not initially. After a few attempts it looks like she's slowly but surely winning back his affections for her and with Tomie out of the picture completely, she's a shoe in. Unfortunately for her, Tomie isn't out of the picture completely - she never is - in fact she's much closer to the two of them than either one of them realizes.
The second story is about a photographer who is strangely obsessed with a girl named Tomie who he hasn't seen since his highschool days. He can't get the girl out of his head and is almost relieved when he heads out for a walk one night at a nearby park and he runs into a dead ringer for his former friend. The two hit it off and his obsession becomes stranger but there's much more to this girl than meets the eye.
The final chapter follows a former coronoer who is now an everyday Japanese salaryman as he goes about his business only to fall for Tomie. They hit it off and he becomes obsessed with her only to slowly but surely start to lose his grip on reality when things don't turn out exactly the way that he wanted them to in the relationship, particularly when the other men in her life begin to interfere.
This made for TV movie does a good job of capturing the spirit of Ito's manga by sticking with the short story format but it does lack some of the gloss of the first feature film. Runa Nagai is quite enchanting in the lead role of Tomie for all three shorts and she does a good job with both the sweeter aspects of the character and the more important sinister traits as well. With the shorter running time there are no pacing problems to worry about and everything moves along at a good clip. A few decent scares are to be found but more often than not the film rightfully relies on a sense of impending doom and dread rather than flat out effects based shocks or jump scares.
DISC THREE - TOMIE: REPLAY (2000)
When Dr. Morita (Sugata Shun, who played Takayama in Takashi Miike's Ichi The Killer), the director of a hospital, mysteriously disappears, his young teenage daughter, Yumi (Sakaya Yamaguchi), discovers his notebook and tries to decipher the clues left within. As she reads through it, things go from clinical and scientific to downright crazed and ultimately, the last few pages are written in blood. One thing she picks up on is that the name 'Tomie' is repeated over and over again, as is the word 'monster.'
At the same time, a pretty young girl escapes from this very same hospital and is rescued by a young man who very quickly falls in love with her. He even goes so far as to shun his best friend and tell him off so that he can spend more time with this mysterious girl.
Yumi sets out to figure out just what happened to her father and piece together this puzzle that seems to surrounding the mysterious Tomie and as she does, she is drawn further into the strange events surrounding the hospital and a girl that was born there many years ago.
This second film in the series based on the popular manga by Junji Ito starts off strong. A shocking birth scene opening in the hospital is accented by some great blue and green lighting, giving the entire affair an eerie and otherworldly look. A few odd set pieces such as a surprise decapitation and an unexpected appearance by a character hiding out in the ceiling corner of a room keep things tense and creepy for about the first forty-five to fifty minutes of the film.
The last third though is where it all comes apart. The visuals remain strong and the performances are as good as they need to be to suspend our disbelief, but the story takes a nosedive once it begins to explain Tomie's origins. While the first film suffered from being a bit too intentionally vague, this second entry gives away the farm and ruins the character's mystique, rendering her fright-less. Where she functions well as a quiet, subtle, and enigmatic femme fatale who is able to inexplicably attract men and in turn make them lose their minds, here she's reduced to a one liner spouting franchise character - Freddy Krueger with long black hair if you will.
That's not to say that the movie doesn't get a few things right - the build up is handled very nicely and characterizations and motives are made far more clear here than in the first installment, which is a welcome change. But the first half of the film writes checks that the finale can't cash and ultimately, Tomie: Replay could very well leave you wanting.
DISC FOUR - TOMIE: REBIRTH (2001)
Up next is Tomie: Rebirth, wherein we meet a man named Hideo who works as a painter. One night while working on a portrait of his girlfriend his live changes forever when she turns out to be so unhappy with the job he's done that she destroys the painting. He's shocked and overcome with emotion and winds up murdering her in a fit of rage. He enlists the aid of his two best friends, Takumi and Shunichi, as he knows he can trust them and together the trio gets rid of her body and hids all the evidence that they can.
Unfortunately for Hideo and his pals, his girlfriend, the one he just killed, happens to be Tomie. Soon after they think they've gotten rid of her corpse she's back again, haunting the three of them and soon driving them all to madness or worse!
This one takes a while to get moving but it does manage to build nicely and there are a few really memorable moments in here that stand alongside the best that the series has to offer in terms of imagery and scares. There's a little too much time spent waiting for Tomie to appear rather than letting her do her thing, but again, this allows you to get comfortable with things before the inevitably come and tear the characters a new one.
This fourth entry in the series (and the third feature film to be made) was directed by none other than Takashi Shimizu, the man behind the Ju-On movies and more recently the excellent Marebito. Those who enjoyed the aforementioned films should give this one a chance as while he obvioulsy has to play within the confines of the Tomie mythology, he does manage to put his stamp on it with some rather unsettling atmosphere and brooding moments of thick tension - two things that his other films have shown he is quite good at. This, intertwined with the ongoing themes of obsession and the dangers that obsession entails, make the movie work quite well.
DISC FIVE - TOMIE: FORBIDDEN FRUIT (2002)
The last film in the set finds a nerdy high school girl named Tomie running into some difficulty at school. Her friends torment and treat her poorly but she hangs out with them anyway as no one else really bothers with her until she meets another girl also named Tomie - a sultry and very attractive girl. The two hit it off and become fast friends but things take a turn for the worse when it turns out that the first Tomie's father knows his daughter's new friend.
As their realtionship grows, the two Tomie begin to take things to the next level and it becomes more romantic than plutonic until things get a little more physical than they probably initially expected. Meanwhile, Tomie's father is trying to figure out the connection this new girl has to his past and when he clues into the fact that she just might be his ex-girlfriend from when he was in high school himself decades ago, he starts to wonder of maybe taking his daughter out of the equation so that they can be together again isn't such a bad idea.
What differentiates this fifth entry in the series from the first four is the lesbian angle. It's an interesting plot device that adds another dimension to the obsessives who are drawn to Tomie and it gives a new angle to the rather formulaic resurrection angle that the films revolve around. For the most part it works well without feeling too exploitative or cheap. The girls' releationship develops like a lot of teenage relationships do and when they physical attraction comes into the equation it almost seems natural. Having the father and the daughter compete for Tomie's affections is also an interesting twist and while the filmmaker's didn't make as much of this as they it does make for some rather tense moments in the film.
When it's all said and done this isn't the strongest entry in the series - there are a few too many slow spots and the characters could have used some fleshing out - but it's certainly a satisfying take on the story.
Video/Audio/Extras:
The first film is presented 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen, the second film is fulframe, the third is 1.78.1 anamorphic widescreen and the forth and fifth are 1.85.1 anamorphic widescreen. Each transfer does a nice job of reproducing the primary colors used so heavily in the film and presents the film in its original aspect ratio. While they does show some evidence of edge enhancement in some spots, the black levels stay solid throughout. There is some very minor print damage in a couple of scenes but they aren't too noticeable and overall these are pretty solid looking presentations with only a few minor flaws. Rebirth has some definite softness to the picture but it doesn't appear to be an authoring problem so much as an issue with the way that the movie was shot.
The Dolby Digital 5.1 mixes on the first, third fourth and fifth film in the set are in their native Japanese language with nice, clear, removable English subtitles that are typo free and don't suffer from the same translation problems that the HK import versions were afflicted by. Overall, the sound quality is very strong with nice use made out of the rear channels when necessary.
The third film is presented in a solid Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround track in its native Japanese language with optional English subtitles that are easy to read and typo free. While a 5.1 mix might have given the film a bit more punch during some of the more active scenes, the 2.0 mix gets the job done well enough, providing some nice spooky effects from sides while most of the dialogue is relegated to the center.
DISC ONE: First up are trailers for Tomie, and it's four sequels. In addition to the five trailers though is a lengthy twenty-eight minute 'making of' featurette that has interviews with director Ataru Oikawa, writer/creator/Manga artist Junji Ito, and most of the cast members involved in the production as well. It's an interesting piece and a welcome addition to the DVD. Animated menus and chapter stops are also included.
DISC TWO: Extras on this disc include trailers for the five films in the set, animated menus and chapter stops.
DISC THREE: Well, aside from a still gallery featuring four images from the manga that inspired the movies, there are trailers for all five entries in the Tomie series. Animated menus and chapter stops are also included.
DISC FOUR: Again there are trailers for the five films in the set on this disc, but this time around there's also a few other goodies starting with a twenty-two minute featurette that compares the effects as well as the storyboards to the finished version of the film. There's also a decent on camera video interview with the director of the film and the key cast members that sheds some light on the history of the character and the film series as well as their take on the Tomie legend. Animated menus and chapter stops are also included.
DISC FIVE: A subtitled Japanese language making of documentary is the main supplement on this disc, clocking in at almost half an hour in length. Don't expect any interviews here to provide context, this is primarily raw behind the scenes footage set to music. That being said, don't be afraid to skim through it as there are some interesting clips in here and it does show how a few key scenes were shot. Animated menus and chapter stops are also included as are trailers for the five films in the set.
The Final Word:
A decent selection of five interesting Japanese horror movies gets compiled in a nice package at a good price!