User reviews

Having been a huge fan of Junji Ito's works (Uzumaki, Tomie, Hellstar Remina) I will do my best to refrain from comparing the manga to the film. NOTE: if you enjoyed the movie, reading the Tomie manga is highly recommended!

Tomie is unlike your typical horror movie where a wraith is lurking down the corridor or the ominous creaking floorboards in a closed room. This one is more subtle and effective at setting an atmosphere where you just know something is not right. I enjoyed the performance by Tomorowo Taguchi as the detective who's agenda is also questionable in this whole affair. Tsukiko (played well by Mami Nakamura) is for the most part in the dark as to what's going on. As time progresses, she begins to come to terms with recent strange events and how they are linked to a shrouded unknown past.

One thing to note: the Tomie manga excels at setting a dark, frightening mood and facial expressions (especially Tomie's) convey strong emotions of pain, fear, anger, betrayal, and obsession; a credit to Ito's talent. Watching the film draws you into the phenomenon of Tomie and is accompanied by an eerie soundtrack sounding like ambient, psychedelic music done by Buffalo Daughter..great stuff!

A slow-burning supernatural drama that's nothing like RING or THE GRUDGE for once. Instead, TOMIE is a comic-book adaptation about an otherwise ordinary schoolgirl who has one special talent: she always, without fail, comes back from the dead.

TOMIE is a weird movie. It's slow-moving and subtle for the most part, and the sometimes disjointed storyline never really visits many places. Horrifying it isn't. On the other hand, it's undoubtedly an atmospheric film full of off-kilter scenes and eerie moments (most of these involving a guy who finds himself 'growing' a new friend).

It's difficult to fault the efforts of cast and crew, and the highlight is the wonderfully weird piece of music that accompanies the titles in which a distorted, computerised voice proclaims an obsessive friendship. Many sequels, of varying quality, followed.

I really enjoy this film. I've watched it twice - trying desperately to figure out what the hell happened at the end, but to no avail. Strangely though, I still find myself in love with it. I think it had has a great deal to do with Miho Kanno's performance. And also the mood. And that's what it is: a mood movie. I can excuse the plot. I think I'd rather be confused by a plot than have a badly filmed, acted and directed movie. It's kind of artsy to me. If you're looking for a horror movie that makes perfect sense, and will make you say, 'wow, that's clever!' go home. But if you're in a strange mood, and it needs feedin', go for it!

In my neverending quest to find new horror, Asia is where the current wealth seems to lie. But Tomie is one of the few I've seen that is rather worthless. It was boring and it had no payoff whatsoever. I hate it when I've been watching a film for an hour and 20 minutes and then nothing comes together in that last 10 or 15 minutes. It just didn't make any attempt to make sense in the very end. That's what kills me. The idea itself and the beginning of the film were very intriguing. It just completely falls apart in that final reel and I can't forgive it for that. The main thing I will remember about this flick is the incredibly eerie score. I really can't believe there are five of these films already. I guess Tomie really will not die.

Tomie tried to imitate the recent brand of Japanese horror movies such as the Ringu but failed miserable. Non-sensical jumping around scenes, psychological horror not working, just some of the bad points about this movie.

The scariest moment came very early in the movie, that was, in the opening scene when an eye stared back at the viewer. Unfortunately, this picture was also at the front-cover of the movie, so you could just get the same scare by staring at the front-cover and skip the rest of the movie.

Poorly directed, poorly put together, poorly plot development. A passable horror...

This movie has kicked of a whole bunch of sequels and seems to be amongst the most popular contemporary movies in Japan. As I am a big fan of the Japanese cinema, I was looking forward to discover the universe of Tomie with this first movie.

In the beginning, I was a little bit disappointed. The movie has a dark mood but a very slow development while the story seems to be a rather ordinary one with a school girl suffering from amnesia that is haunted by its past and an evil demon in form of a beautiful girl that resurrects over and over again. The movie seems to be filled with many scenes that have a couple of lengths, for example as a detective talks about seven minutes with the girl's psychologist.

What we don't know at that point is that the details mentioned in this very special dialogue are important to understand the ending of the movie that finishes with a punch and a twist. The final scene excuses for many clichés and predictable events before and they really surprised me. Still, I am not entirely sure how to interpret the end but that's what's so interesting, gripping and mesmerizing about it.

Another good point is that the movie shows a lot of the Japanese culture which is interesting for the international public. The lifestyle, the food and the landscapes are shown without giving an ordinary documentary touch to the flick.

All in all, the ending is worth the wait and I would like to try out the second movie one day. Yet, I have seen much better Japanese movies and don't understand why this series seem to be popular in that particular way. I don't believe the hype yet and can only talk about a quite good but not an excellent flick.

I watched this, the first of the Tomie series, after having already seen the second, "Tomie - Replay," which builds on the storyline that's started here. From the reviews of I'd read I expected this, the original "Tomie," to be fairly pedestrian and mediocre and... that's exactly what it is.

This one is not really horror, not really even a murder/suspense thing. "Tomie" is rather an interesting but unambitious murder melodrama - that happens to have a few scenes of gruesome violence, an atmosphere of weirdness and creepiness throughout, and which is based on an understated supernatural premise.

I don't think this is as bad as some are letting on though - the story itself holds together nicely, for instance, and in that respect "Tomie" is roughly 50 times better than that contemptible Korean mess called "Tale of Two Sisters" that so many are raving about sycophantically.

The ending is a little arbitrary but that's nothing new to naturalistic fiction; the characters are all interesting and well-acted; the cinematography is gloomy and occasionally oppressive but the choice of camera angles and composition is very well done. The music is probably the scariest thing about this movie. There's an English-language song that's sung in a voice filtered through an absolutely demented signal-processor patch that conveys a palpable and unsettling malevolence. It's just too bad none of that song's creepiness spilled into the movie's plot.

What's lacking is a needed element of intensity that really grabs you and sucks you in. In that sense you could almost consider "Tomie" to be a lengthy trailer or prologue to the vastly-superior "Tomie-Replay." I have yet to see the third and fourth, respectively "Rebirth" and "Forbidden Fruit." This first one is optional - good for Japanophiles and completists - but "Replay" works as a standalone film with no problem. Do *not* miss that one - it's easily one of the best Asian horror flicks I've yet seen and I was not expecting that at all.

A photography student called Tsukiko is going to hypnosis therapy to regain her lost memories. Meanwhile, a police detective is investigating a crime, and is interested in getting info from her. Tsukiko also has a friend called Tomie, who has such bad luck that a total of nine horror movies were named after her.

Tomie was released in the same year as Ringu. It is less known outside Japan, and not as impactful. Still, it has unique sides, with its own lore, rules, and feel. It gives an impression of being a classic because of the serious way it is made, with many scenes set up in an artistically ambitious way. Tsukiko being a photographer adds to the esteticism.

Although it has bloody scenes, it does not become very scary. The director has kind of said that he wanted to reduce the amount of violence. "I wanted this to be more like a drama for youth." The number of fake scares, like knocking on the door or images in mirrors, is also less than usual. It is only scary when there is real danger, which makes it cleaner. The few special effects are probably mostly physical. It is mostly calm, with a low tempo, and people talk slowly. Especially during the therapy sessions with the serene psychiatrist.

There is reasonably good acting from many participants. Tsukiko responds well to the horror. The psychiatrist has integrity, and the detective is peculiar, with entertaining habits.

The most impactful character is of course Tomie, at least relative to others in the movie. Compared to well-known characters from other movies, I wouldn't call her colourful. But that is not her style anyway. She is not extravagant, but self-aware.

Each movie has a different actress playing Tomie, and she is slightly different in every one. This is probably not a coincidence. I realized that one needs to watch more than one to appreciate how great she is.

Another thing that has gained a life of its own is Robby's song, a creepy theme song that I am sure that I have heard before. There are also other nice songs. The background music is good, but sometimes mismatched with the action, so that the horror effect is weakened. There is at least one scene that would profit from more fitting background music.

A very minor complaint is that one scene has a sudden jump from night to day.

As it is a Junji Ito story, don't expect logical explanations for everything, and you'll end up less irritated. I have my own theory, but it might not be the same as what the author intended.

I'm happy to have gained entrance to this series and adding it to others like Ringu and One Missed Call. I think everyone interested in Japanese horror should check it out and see if they like it.

Based on a manga, and spawning four sequels, this film is about a young lady named Tsukiko (Ms. Nakamura) who has enlisted the help of a psychiatrist (Ms. Doguchi)to try to remember the events of 3 years before, described as an "accident". You find that a fellow schoolgirl named Tomie (Ms. Kanno) was killed, but no one can find the body..because she won't die. This film is more psychological drama than horror film. In the apartment below Tsukiko lives a male student who seems to be raising some mutant strain of something in a box. Is this Tomie re-incarnated? The film moves slowly, and even drags a little at times, but for fans of the manga it is essential viewing. A much better film than it has to be, its watchable. All 5 films are available in a box set. For this film, the concept is intriguing if not wholly essential.

`Tomie will not die', boasts the ad copy, but she will bore you to death. This glacially paced Japanese offering is best avoided (unless you've run out of Ambien™ and need to grab some shuteye). Sometimes a slower pace builds mood, nurtures a sense of foreboding, but in `Tomie' all it does is make your eyelids heavy. The performances are okay, but the script is weak, the story is vague and the payoff is nonexistent. It's also shot in a very perfunctory and static manner, so even the cinematography is lackluster.

The funniest thing about the DVD is the behind-the-scenes feature, which shows the `special effects' team creating one of the most phony looking decapitated heads since the glory days of ‘60s schlock cinema. That and the `disfigured' lad with his hilariously unconvincing bugged-out Jack Elam eye. Very amateurish DIY stuff.

From the opening credits, I was hooked. There's a strange static and distorted voice over the black screen with simple white titles. Then we're taken to a noisy city street where a young man is digging through a white paper bag. Within a few seconds, what should be horrifying segues into one of the most beautiful moments of stillness I have ever seen in a film, Asian or otherwise. The music is at once haunting and peaceful. It's like those moments in a Miyazaki film that are so peaceful, with a tinge of Dario Argento's Goblin soundtrack.

It is very hard to find a decent review of this movie. The one positive review I found gave away the entire plot. It's one of those movies that is so metaphor-laden, it makes absolutely no sense if you just watch the images and hear the sounds. Still pretty amazing, but I don't think it would keep someone's attention if they weren't thinking while viewing. There is a lot more going on here than just a few murders.

Like many (too many?) Japanese movies, there is a lot left unsaid. Characters with strange quirks are introduced, and it never explains why they have those quirks. Transitions from one scene to the next sometimes feel awkward. It sometimes feels like you're reading a book by a first-time author, as it is not clear why some scenes are even included. This is not a polished high-quality cinematography type film either...not up to the standards of Ringu or Dark Water. It lies somewhere between the blockbusters and Evil Dead Trap.

Even as I make those criticisms, I could only bring myself to take one smoke break. As much as Tomie may look like Sadako (and every other female ghost), this is a truly engaging film that still has me thinking 24 hours after viewing it.

A weak film with a few high points, first among them the opening: A busy, sun-bathed downtown-ish sidewalk, no sky, no shadows of significance, no cars, just the passing crowd. Passing eyes, because the scene is about hiding. A man, who turns out later to be a kid, as they all are except the doctor and detective, ducks out of a shop and walks, carrying something messily wrapped in plastic. It's shorter and fatter than a bed pillow. Here, you might take it for a scavenger's cache or a homeless person's portable home. Just before the film's title rolls, the young man pauses to look through a slit in the bundle. Impossibly, a live human eye looks back. Up to this point, the film's silent, Keatonesque, wonderful.

The chain-smoking woman doctor, with patients crowding each other's time, is the film's most intriguing character. She seems to have her own story, just out of view. (Think perhaps of the nurse in Teshigahara's Tanin no kao. I might have told the story from her point of view, leaving her apparent disinterest intact so that she doesn't mirror the hyper-involved researchers in the Ring films. In Tomie, she's present only to trigger point-of-view girl Tsukiko's dream sequences.

A word about translation. If you find this at all here, it's likely to be on a Chinese DVD with Chinese and English subtitle options. A couple of times in Tomie the English was so poor, as if a translation not of the Japanese soundtrack but of the Chinese translation, that I had to replay over and over trying and mostly failing to draw back enough of my extremely meager Japanese to figure out what the fractured English subtitle was trying to say. The first card the doctor holds up, by the way, simply says "Tomie" twice, once in katakana and once, below that, in hiragana. The doctor's trying to get Tomie to respond to her own name.

As much fan as I am of Asian horror movies, then it was rather difficult to get into "Tomie". Why? Well, because it was quite slow-moving and not really having much of a solid and coherent storyline to it.

The story is about a dead girl named Tomie, who apparently has come back to wreck havoc on those responsible. But apparently Tomie has been appearing throughout various events in the last many, many years.

For a horror movie, then there was absolutely nothing scary about the movie, and no shock moments at all. The movie was fairly monotone and uneventful.

As for the acting, well people did good enough jobs with their given roles, though there were moments where you sit with your toes curled up because of some rather bad acting and lack of emotions in given situations from some of the cast.

I bought a 4-disc collection with "Tomie", "Tomie: Replay", "Tomie: Re-Birth" and "Tomie: The Final Chapter", so hopefully there will be more meat on the follow up movies, otherwise then this is a series founded on a very weak storyline.

If "Tomie" is one of the movies that started the Japanese horror wave of movies like "The Ring" and "The Grudge", then they were off to a fairly weak start. Luckily the genre has progressed and evolved tremendously in the right direction.

A young woman suffering from amnesia goes to a quack to help her remember. Meanwhile her new downstairs neighbor is growing a Tomie in a box. I'm sorry getting ahead of myself. Tomie is a supernatural demon girl who whenever she is killed resurrects himself. If her head is cut off. she resurrects into two Tomies, and so on and so forth. There's also a detecting investigating into murders and this Tomie demon girl who he knows cant die. Have no clue why everyone thinks the ending is confusing. I knew where it was headed as soon as they went into the whole thing of what Tomie does. I din;t not like it for that reason though. I didn't like it because the characters are too one-dimensional and the film just coasts on and on with no real payoff to speak of. The song was cool that's about it. Competently made, but lifeless

My Grade: C

DVD Extras: Behind the scenes; Trailers for the first 5 "Tomie" film

I have just finished watching this movie, I think. I know Japanese movies are not like your standard American flicks. This movie was a little more subjective than other Japanese movies that I have watched. A lot of Japanese movies are very simple, no matter how many twists they may have. This movie definitely has a lot of holes in it, especially the ending. I think I know where they were going , but I really don't know anyone else who has seen the movie so I cant ask them if they came away with the same interpretation. The movie is okay, the story is okay, I just wish it were either more in depth or gorier. I don't mind giving up a little depth for more gore. One posting on this movie compared this to a Japanese David Lynch flick. I wouldn't go that far, but I understand the comparison. There are no real shocking moments in the movie, no scenes that make you jump or turn away. Even though I was not totally impressed by this movie, I still may go to Blockbuster and rent one of the latest titles in this series to see if they are any different. I'm not sure yet if I would recommend this to anyone else, let me check out more from this title and I will let you know.

I claim no prior knowledge of the film or series, nor the source material. Maybe that puts me at a disadvantage in terms of the content itself, but it does allow one to more objectively assess a picture on its own merits. I won't 100% write off 'Tomie' - I think there are good ideas here - but I'm not impressed. The plot that the film has to offer within the first third is minimal, and even as it's dumped almost entirely within a single scene of dialogue, it's vague, scattered, and unfocused in its communication. The same holds true in the second third of the picture, with no discernible improvement - why, if anything, by the time the movie is two-thirds over, the conveyance of narrative is even less cohesive and more incoherent than it was nearer the start! At this point I've continued to watch only out of a sense of commitment and not any active interest. I endure, through to the end, and my opinion has not changed: This is a mess.

If there's any rhyme or reason to anything that happens in this feature, the writing is unable to provide it. There are scenes and ideas herein that should make for a compelling, deeply unsettling genre flick, but that would require a semblance of meaningful narrative writing or plot development. Editing and sequencing come off as being just as sloppy as the screenplay, and I don't know how I could earnestly share any praise of the direction, either. I almost want to say that the cast give admirable performances, Miho Kanno and Mami Nakamura in particular, but under the circumstances these do not at all matter when 'Tomie' presents more like a loose smattering of ideas thrown at a wall rather than a concrete story. 'Tomie,' as it presents, is almost senseless, such that even to read an outside summary of the plot it looks like empty bluster.

Maybe familiarizing myself with the manga would help to elucidate the tale in this adaptation, but even if that's true, it only accentuates that this picture can't stand by itself. Maybe filmmaker Ataru Oikawa was deliberately aiming for abstruseness in his storytelling, bordering on abstraction, but even if that's true, the result here is disordered and fumbling. Any possible value the movie may have to offer is glimpsed only fleetingly, intangible as it's trapped within the dully asinine quagmire of unintelligible rambling that the assemblage otherwise represents. I congratulate those who get something more out of 'Tomie' than I did, but I regret spending 95 minutes on this.

anyone who is familiar with the writings of Junji Ito would know the basic story of Tomie, and what to expect from this movie. i bought the DVD of it a few weeks ago, and have watched it a couple times. you will be able to recognize bits from the stories in the manga's, it's a fairly good movie, unless you don't enjoy reading subtitles. the DVD i bought was Japanese only with sub-titles, which i don't mind because i am used to reading it. though.. after watching the trailers, i am more looking forward to buying the 2nd and 3rd movies due to what i have seen of them. anyways, i didn't get a fright out of the movie, but it is good.. and it's not trying to jump on any band wagons.. Japanese horror will always be great for me at least

Tomie is another so called Japanese "new wave horror"that started with "the Ring".This one is based on a manga comic and tells the story of the girl Tomie who gets killed out of jelousy and manages to take bloody revenge trough reincarnation. The movie starts promising by building up the tension very slowly and revealing the plot bit by little bit.But once the whole plot is carefully revealed with the help of flashbacks the movie speeds up to a very confusing end.As usually with Asian movies the camerawork and editing is nicely done but can't save the movie to give that extra boost to get to the same level as "the Ring" or "Shikoku".This movie was followed by Tomie2:replay.The soundtrack was provided by the hip Escalator records from Tokyo.

A few months ago, on a popular movie and game website I visit, I read scathing reviews of the first three entries in the "Tomie" series- a franchise of Japanese horror films based loosely upon a horror- manga. I decided to watch the films for myself to form my own opinion. And while not the train-wreck I was expecting, "Tomie" is quite a mess of a film.

It follows a fractured series of story lines, mainly centered on Tsukiko, a student who studies photography, and has suffered memory loss after an apparent accident three years prior. At the same time, a mysterious eye-patched man carries a severed female head in a paper bag back to his apartment (under Tsukiko's own apartment), and the head is able to regenerate in a woman over time. Also, a detective is trying to solve the mystery of "Tomie", a young woman whom Tsukiko knew before losing her memory that was allegedly killed and dismembered by another schoolmate, and may or may not be the same "Tomie" who has re- appeared throughout Japanese history, always subsequently disappearing or being killed.

To call this film a convoluted mess is an understatement. My first point to bring up is that this film seems to assume that viewers are intimately aware of the manga and are fans, because almost no effort is given to explain the seemingly random twists and turns the story makes. You'll only get vague ideas, like "demonic forces" or "amnesia", but that's about it. The back-story, or lack thereof, makes virtually no sense whatsoever, and you will leave the film scratching your head in sheer confusion. This is not good- films should be able to make sense on their own, without having seen the source material, otherwise, there's no point to an adaptation.

The filmmaking is also cheap and amateurish to a remarkable degree. Camera placements and set-ups are basic, bland and boring, and even at times hilariously awful. (Camera angles that completely cut off half the actor's heads, static shots that sit for 30 seconds or more after the scene is finished, etc) The editing is foul and jarring, and has the subtlety of a brick to the face, and the few makeup and gore effects are middle-school quality- obvious fake blood and atrocious prosthetics that look like cheap plastic body-parts you can buy at the convenience store for Halloween decorations. Although the insanely cheap effects do give the film an amateur charm, and elicit some extremely unintentional belly-laughs. (Particularly one uproariously funny effect involving a man with a bulging eyeball on one side of his face that looks like a doll's eye had been super-glued over his real eye)

The music, which tries to create atmosphere, is goofy and misplaced. The central "theme" which plays during the opening credits and through several scenes involving the evil "Tomie" character sounds more like a lame 80's pop song than an eerie tune, featuring silly guitar riffs and a bizarre pseudo-robot voice that sounds like Microsoft Sam with a head cold. And be prepared for frustration, because there isn't much variety to the background music, so you will hear the same few songs over and over again, and it gets grating.

That being said, there are a few good things about the film. Like I said, the complete ineptitude of the production does supply a lot of good, unintentional laughs, making it ironically enjoyable at times. And the acting is surprisingly decent, and often fun and hammy. (particularly the man who plays the detective, and said buldging-eye man)

This movie is a complete and utter failure as a thriller, and I should technically give it a 1 out of 10. But the unintentional laughs elevates it a few points. I give Tomie a very, very weak 3 out of 10.