Review of Tomie (1998) by 'Becca L — 07 Mar 2006

[font=Times New Roman][size=3][color=darkorange]Dir: Ataru Oikawa[/color][/size][/font].

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[font=Times New Roman][size=3][color=darkorange]I just had to touch the electric fence.[/color][/size][/font].

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[font=Times New Roman][size=3][color=darkorange]As usual, I have ignored my friend?s justifiable warnings about seeing this movie. I just [i]had[/i] to see for myself.[/color][/size][/font].

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[font=Times New Roman][size=3][color=darkorange]The story itself is intriguing, but it?s based off of a popular manga of the same name. A lot of manga is much better in book or anime form than live action. The story goes something like this: a young girl (Tsukiko) is seeing a psychologist/hypnotherapist to try and recover some of her lost memory as she developed a form of amnesia after an ?accident? a few years prior. Under hypnosis, she mentions the name ?Tomie.? At the same time, a detective is trying to track down this ?Tomie? ? apparently a demon who can re-spawn from any of her severed body parts. A group of murders centered around Tsukiko?s friends and acquaintances, repressed memories, an evil but beautiful demon, and a supernatural mystery?.all these elements should come together to make this film a decent horror film. You would think.[/color][/size][/font].

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[font=Times New Roman][size=3][color=darkorange]Unfortunately, the film falls flat on too many levels to be very likeable. I at least wasn?t staring at my watch the whole time, but it could have been so much better. The acting was very blasé, as if the actors didn?t really care about giving the characters any depth. This in turn makes the characters boring. The only spookiness comes across with the high contrast lighting, lots of dark shadows pooling behind the characters, but that is artistically the only likeable aspect of the movie. And it?s been done before. The bloody horror scenes are not very bloody, nor very scary. The plot crawls along predictably. The relationships between the characters are not believable. For the first ¾ of the movie, we are not shown Tomie?s face, to give her an air of mystery (actually, I didn?t really care too much what she looked like). When we do see Tomie?s face, we are nonplussed. There is nothing overly sinister or overly beautiful about her, as we are led to believe.[/color][/size][/font].

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[size=3][color=darkorange][font=Times New Roman]The final climax is not very exciting, and I just watched it for the sake of watching it. Overall the movie was just boring, and there isn?t much more to say about it. I can?t even make the review interesting!!! [/font][font=Wingdings][font=Wingdings]J[/font][/font][font=Times New Roman] I say ?skip it!? I am amazed that there are even sequels to this. The idea is a good one, but the movie is a bad one.[/font][/color][/size].