Tomie: anaza feisu

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.

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).

1. Originally conceived as a TV series consisting of three V-cinema episodes, later spliced into a feature film. So technically the second installment of the Tomie film series.

Three stories with interesting yet flawed direction and writing. I enjoyed the general vibe, kawaii girls and nostalgic music.

2. Originally conceived as a TV series consisting of three V-cinema episodes, later spliced into a feature film. So technically the second installment of the Tomie film series.

Three stories with interesting yet flawed direction and writing. I enjoyed the general vibe, kawaii girls and nostalgic music.

3. Originally conceived as a TV series consisting of three V-cinema episodes, later spliced into a feature film. So technically the second installment of the Tomie film series.

Three stories with interesting yet flawed direction and writing. I enjoyed the general vibe, kawaii girls and nostalgic music.

Don"t get me wrong, Tomie: Another Face is a bad movie, but I expected so much worse.

To get things out of the way, yeah, this sure feels like a low-budget TV movie: the acting is wooden, the soundtrack sounds like it was taken from a children's educational video game, the special effects are bad, etc...

I like the anthology format. It's done clumsily here (due to being stitched-together TV episodes) but I still like it, it makes it feel somewhat closer to the original manga. The TV format also helps a lot with the pacing. The first Tomie was an extremely slow mess, so being limited to 25 minutes means each story at least gets to the point

Talking about the stories, they're... fine. They're all cliche retellings of concepts from the manga, said concepts doing all the heavy lifting. None are too memorable, but hey, they could be worse so I'm not complaining.

My mian gripe with the movie is the directing. It lacks any real direction (like any cheap TV movies) except for one part: Runa Nagai. I do think she isn't that bad of an actress, BUT for most of the movie she was directed to do a high-pitched "cutesy" voice which got annoying after 5 minutes

Overall, not a good film, but at least it's watchable and goes by quick, which is more than I can say for other Tomie movies.

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.