Ushikubi Village

After watching a viral video, a woman who believes that she's the twin of one of the participants decides to investigate the town where the video was shot, eventually uncovering a deadly secret within the town involving their belief in the malevolent nature of twins and tries to stop it from consuming her.

Overall, there's a lot to like with this one. This starts with an intriguing setup that provides everything with a rather chilling environment to work with. The initial setup of the fateful village and the cursed means through which it spreads throughout the internet to reach the girl by means of the viral video is a fairly strong one. That comes off rather nicely with the stranger in the video who looks exactly like her which offers up the kind of inquiry to look further into the legends surrounding it. With plenty of build-up focusing on the story involving the spirit that haunts the village cursing everyone who hears it to die shortly afterward, none of this is original but serves well enough in this kind of feature by offering the kind of baseline for the ghosts and spirits of the area to appear naturally in the film. The later reveal about the superstitions of the residents involving twins and how she plays a part in the curse running through the town carries this kind of appealing setup rather well. This provides the film with the opportunity to feature some chilling sequences and setpieces. The opening viral video of the schoolgirls exploring the abandoned building on a ghost hunt and encountering the vengeful spirit is an appropriately creepy intro that provides some effective interplay between the on-screen chat with the viewers and a ghostly twist that comes off quite well. Later interactions along the way to the fabled village offer up similarly fine sequences, while the highlight sequence of the two exploring the hotel is an absolute standout. With some chilling images of the ghost lurking in the background watching over them, some ingenious interplay of the ghosts' haunting continually affecting the area and the lengthy nature all combine together into a fantastic part of the film. As the curse gets stronger and starts taking the lives of her friends and those around her, this sets up the solid finale featuring the confrontations in the underground caves and the emotional resonance found in the story finally being resolved to bring peace to the area. All told, these aspects make for an enjoyable time here. While these offer up positive points, there are some drawbacks with this one. The biggest letdown is this one's underwhelming pace that lets it build up far too long of a running time. The exploits at the beginning diving deep into her troubled home life and school issues trying to keep the boyfriend from charming her as she's obviously only interested in him for practical rather than romantic means just drag this one out. Likewise, although immensely creepy in their own right, many of the scare scenes and shocks are shot in ways that take quite a while to play out which is somewhat distressing. The cadence and tempo of the scenes come up short on several occasions, especially in the abandoned hotel that seems to take forever which is also the case of the backstory flashback that fills in the gaps of the plot. While answering the questions of who everyone is, their relationships, and the tragedy that brings them together, it's all so slow and drawn out that it adds unnecessary length mainly by the speed of the scene rather than the actions. It's all that bring this one down in the end.

Rated Unrated/R: Graphic Violence and Graphic Language.

I was initially lured into watching the 2022 Japanese horror mystery "Ushikubi Village" (aka "Ox-Head Village") as I liked the movie's cover. Plus the fact that this was a Japanese horror movie that I had not already seen, nor actually heard about, also helped to make me want to sit down and watch it.

Writers Daisuke Hosaka and Takashi Shimizu just utterly failed to provide me with much of any entertainment here. First of all, the movie's pacing was so slow that it would put even a dead person to sleep. The narrative was so monotonous and slow paced that my attention span dwindled and my interest in the movie did the same with each passing minute. And the storyline was just pure rubbish. I literally had no clue about the point of this movie, because it made very little sense, and much less provided me with any sense of entertainment.

The acting performances in "Ushikubi Village" were fair enough, just a shame that the actors and actresses literally had nothing to work with here from writers Daisuke Hosaka and Takashi Shimizu, the latter also functioning as the movie's director.

Visually then you're not in for a particular treat here. There was nothing outstanding to be witnessed as the movie trotted on and on without having anything interesting to tell.

As much as I enjoy Asian horror, and the Japanese cinema definitely have a lot of great horror movies, then "Ushikubi Village" was just a swing and a miss. This is not a movie that I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on. Some of us suffered through this ordeal so you don't have to.

My rating of director Takashi Shimizu's 2022 movie "Ushikubi Village" lands on a two out of ten stars.

This film essentially begins with three teenage girls named "Akina" (Rinka Otani), "Mizuki" (Riko) and "Shion" (Koki) livestreaming a visit to a supposedly haunted building in a rural part of the Hokuriku region of Japan. Once there, both Akina and Mizuki play a trick on Shion by putting an ox mask on her and then pushing her into an elevator in that building. Having not been used in quite some time, the elevator plummets to the bottom floor and Shion is never seen again. And from that point on, neither are the other two girls. The scene then shifts to a teenage boy named "Ren" (Riku Hagiwara) showing a high school girl by the name of "Kanon" (also played by Kiku) a video of the three other girls with the one named Shion bearing a strong resemblance to Kanon. Intrigued by this, both Ren and Kanon decide to travel to that exact same area to check it out. What neither of them count on, however, is the horror that waits for them the closer they get to their destination. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was the final film in the "Village of Terror" trilogy with the only connection being the director (Takashii Shimizu). At least, that's the only similarity I could find. Be that as it may, although the acting was sufficient for the most part, I thought that the horror was somewhat diluted due to the rather slow unfolding of events. Likewise, the ending seemed a bit too cliched and could have used some improvement as well. That being said, while I certainly don't consider this to be a bad horror film by any means, it wasn't quite as horrific as it should have been, and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

I'm sitting here currently forced by my girlfriend to watch this rubbish. This movie suggestion may have just ended our relationship...

The plot is boring, drawn out and utterly unbelievable. The production quality is poor, TV-drama-level at best. There's not a single scare or spine chilling moment, and apparently flesh and bone are tougher than a falling elevator. Add on to that a few cheesy moments of 'comedy' and you get this disaster of a movie.

This is coming from someone who has sat through plenty of other bad movies just for the bizzare moments...but this has to be the most unbearable 2 hours of film I've had to endure.

Ox-head Village, also known as Ushikubi Village, fails because it doesn't know how to wrap up its story and because of a lack of character development.

The story focuses on Kanon, a high school girl who lives with her father. One day, Ren, her friend, shows to Kanon a video where one of the girls is identical to her, basically her twin sister. This fact makes Kanon decide to look for this girl. Up to this point, we already know that evil spirits are tormenting Kanon.

We are able to notice the lack of character development since the inciting incident. There is no apparent reason for Kanon to decide to search for the girl, other than the fact that they are identical. The girl in the video, Shion, is missing; If you're going to search for a missing girl, the first thing you'd probably try to check is the local authorities, no? Of course not! Kanon and Ren decide to visit the haunted hotel where Shion disappeared because, well, why not?

Going back to this review's reasoning, Kanon wants to find out Shion just to know why they look so similar? That seems to me to be a weak motive. As the story progresses, we realize that there is a main motive behind this frantic search, a stronger motive, but one that the film does not know how to properly explore. The holes in character development leave them all feeling unrealistic and contrived.

All the backstory about the Oxhead is expendable. The film uses this folklore to try to create a "gotcha!" moment that doesn't work. When the story reveals to us the truth about the deaths, nothing makes sense.

All this confusion culminates in the denouement, a meaningless denouement. The characters we have followed so far are literally thrown into the final scenario, to face the beast, so that we have the final confrontation with a nonsensical antagonist that has no apparent motives other than to be evil simply for the sake of it. In a ridiculous ending scene, the story bids farewell with the usual horror movie cliché.

I don't recommend this movie on any possible hypotheses.