Tomie: anaza feisu

This movie is more in sync with the Tomie horror vein. I especially liked the 2nd story (those prints are way cool!). How mysterious is the bartender? What's his deal since he doesn't say much and yet conveys a lot! The 3rd story closes the film nicely. I must admit that although this was shot on video, the cinematography is well done for the medium. The use of colors are vivid and shades of red and green at night are very effective. Runa Nagai does well as Tomie looking extremely photogenic one moment and then totally manic the next. Can you blame the poor sap in the last story?

Tomie: Another Face is not exactly scary, but worth a watch.

OK, the shot on video look actually works. Runa Nagai is perfectly cast as a 12 year old looking lolita demon The only other girl who could play this part would be Yuko Ogura. Tomei, the girl who just won't die, is an excellent X Files type story, even if it's not a particularly good horror story.

You know, there's something a little odd about certain Japanese stories. I'm not quite sure what it is. Perhaps something in their cultural past or the fact they recently came out of a feudal society. I seem to recall they have this thing where they tie up nude girls and the placement of the ropes and the knots used are precise to the point of being an art form. What's up with that? Go figure. I can only imagine how they view us westerners.

Anyway, if you're looking for something a little different, you don't mind the lolita aspect of the character, and you can get beyond the fact that apparently Japanese doesn't translate well into English so reading the sub-titles may actually be more entertaining than the movie, then Tomie might just be worth watching. Hey, I'll admit it. I enjoyed it.

If you like lots of special effects, fast paced story lines, and lots of startle moments, this is NOT the movie for you. If you've seen the first Tomie this is a lower budget version of that with a sort of made for TV feel. I kind of liked it a little better than the first. I felt I understood what was going on more and it was more spooky somehow. But the people I watched it with didn't like it so much. They felt that nothing really happened.

If you have by any chance seen Boogiepop and Others, this movie is incredibly similar to that. It's separated into different stories,there are very few effects until the very end, and the cinematography is strangely off, but at the same time there's more of an emphasis on the story and the more you pay attention the more you get out of it.

You'll probably never see this in a theater. It's a scary movie that's not all that scary, an intellectual horror movie that isn't hard to understand, it can work on several levels or not at all. Me, I like odd movies and I don't mind a few imperfections, especially when they add to the oddness, but if you aren't quite the weirdophile I am you may want to steer clear of this.

Tomie: Another Face isn't a feature film but three episodes made for Japanese television cut into one single movie. This film is much less intriguing than the first feature film and only interesting for avid collectors and fans of the franchise. While the second episode shows some promise, the first is just above average while the third is simply uninteresting.

The first episode is about a high school love triangle. Tomie was brutally murdered and her boyfriend is still deeply saddened by the tragic events. His former girlfriend wants to win him back and starts getting in touch with him again. One day however, Tomie is back at school as if nothing had happened. The fateful love triangle soon leads to another tragedy. On the positive side, this first episode is short and concise, has an intriguing atmosphere reminiscent of high school horror movies and ends with a creative twist. On the negative side, the acting performances are quite stiff and the camera work is equally static.

The second episode tells the story of a photographer who can't forget a beautiful woman he photographed ten years ago in his hometown. He has since become obsessed with the beautiful lady and returns to his town in order to find her. He is stunned when he meets a young woman who looks very similar to her in a shady bar and asks her to be his model and muse. The photographer realizes too late that something is amiss when he develops the pictures he took of the young lady as tragedy strikes on numerous occasions. The second episode was the most intriguing one of the three. It had diversified locations, a few mild horror elements and a few minor twists and turns. The opening minutes slightly overstayed their welcome and the acting performances were at times overacted.

The third episode tells the story of a naive man who is proposing to his girlfriend in a park when they suddenly get attacked by a man with an eye patch. The couple manages to escape but the fiancee asks the naive man to kill the perpetrator for her if they ever cross his path again. The man reluctantly agrees as his fiancee even buys a knife for him and menaces to leave him if he isn't able to protect her. He meets the man with the eye patch again and the mysterious man overpowers and kidnaps the naive man. He then tells him an incredible story about his fiancee. The protagonist must decide whom to trust and make a crucial choice. This episode is the least intriguing of the three. It has one minor twist towards the end but most of the story is quite predictable and at times even boring. Even though the acting performances are probably the best in this episode, the story itself lacks inspiration.

In the end, this short collection of three television episodes is entertaining and worth to be watched once for fans of the franchise. However, the episodes aren't too memorable and suffer from amateurish acting performances, a lack of scary moments and stiff camera work. Tomie: Another Face is only for die-hard fans of the franchise.

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.