Saturday Scream Queens: The Faces of Tomie

One of the few truly creepy comics book series is "Tomie" by Japanese writer/artist Junji Ito. It relates tales of its title character... a mysterious teenaged girl who all men become oobssesed with--so obsessed that they will kill anyone who they think stands between them and their possession of her, including Tomie herself. But no matter how gory and apparently final Tomie's death, she reappears again and again, always bringing madness and destruction to those she interacts with.

With the promise of blood and gore and a sexy girl at the middle of it all, it should come as no surprise that the "Tomie" comics have been become a long-running series of movies. While Tomie is always an exact copy of how she looked before--even when there are multiples of her running around at the same time, due to the way she regenerates from bits of her previous body--no actress has so far played her in more than once.

This post covers the first seven actresses to tackle the roll of the Girl Who Always Comes Back.

Miho Kanno: (Tomie, 1999)
In 1993, Miho Kanno rocketed to stardom as a J-Pop singer at the age of 15 when a musical group she was in won a national contest in 1993 and became a regular feature in variety shows. By 1994, she had launched a successful career as an dramatic actress with starring roles in television movies and series, and stage work followed shortly thereafter. In 1997, she posed for a "photo art book" titled NUDITY... and it became a Top Ten national best-seller in Japan.

Kanno was the first actress to portray Tomie, and she remains the biggest star to tackle the role. It wasn't her first horror movie, however. In 1995, she played a teen charged with defeating magical evils yet who yearned to just be a normal girl in "Eko-Eko Azarak: Wizard of Darkness". In the same year she played Tomie, she also appearred in the horror film "Hypnosis".

Kanno has left her pop-singer days behind her years ago, but she continues to be a busy and popular dramatic actress in Japan, with an ever-growing list of television, stage, and film credits to her name.

Runa Nagai (Tomie: Another Face, 1999)
Runa Nagai is primarily a model who specializes in "photo art books" which are collections of pictures of girls and young women in various states of undress. Given her main line, it is only natural that she should be cast as the supernatural temptress, Tomie. (And one of the story-lines in the anthology film in which she starred had Tomie becoming involved with a photographer, so perhaps there's some meta-referencing going on.)

Nagai had a handful of film and television roles during the early 2000s, with her biggest role being as Tomie in "Another Face".

Miki Sakai (Tomie: Rebirth, 2001)
Born in 1978, Miki Sakai got her start as a professional actress in the acclaimed drama "Love Letters" in 1995. Throughout the 1990s, she was very successful at playing "the girl next door"-type parts, so perhaps the reason hers was a Tomie performance that many rank among the best there have been so far--she had a good-girl veneer with the monster lurking beneath.

Sakai continues to be a popular actress on Japanese television, mostly appearing in comedies and lighthearted mystery made-for-TV movies and series, but "Rebirth" remains her only horror role thus far. The closest she's come have been a couple of dark thrillers made for theatrical release in recent years.

Nozomi Ando (Tomie: Forbidden Fruit, 2002)
Nozomi Ando got her start at the age of 17 with a lead role in the monster-fest "Gamera 3," in 1999 and she's been kept busy with roles in horror films and thrillers ever since.

Aside from her turn as Tomie, other noteworthy roles have been a teenaged demon-hunter in "Sakuya: Slayer of Demons" (2000), the love interest of a werewolf Ronin in "Werewolf Warrior" (2004), and a hapless college kid stalked by a demon deep within a forest in "Gurozuka" (2005).

Rio Matsumoto (Tomie: Beginning, 2005)
This actress can be said to have something in common with Tomie. She began her career in 1994 as a child actress and model, but retired from the business in 1999 because she wanted to attend high school as a "normal student."

Then, in 2002, In 2002 after her graduation from high school, she rose from the ashes of her past career, reborn and reconstituted like Tomie, or, to use a less sinister example, a Phoenix. Since her second debut, she has returned full-bore to modeling and acting. She has had recurring roles in numerous television dramas and appeared in several action films. "Tomie: Beginnings" is so far her only foray into horror.

In 2007, Matsumoto branched out into fashion desig with a line of wedding dresses. She continues to divide her professional life between acting, modeling, and fashion design.

Anri Ban (Tomie: Revenge, 2005)
Born in 1985, Anri Ban was 20 years old when she became the 7th face of Tomie. It was her first role in a horror film, but she had already appeared in key roles in several mysteries and action-oriented dramas.

The only other horror movie on her resume is "Woman Transformation" (2007) in which she plays one of three women who gradually transform into demons, but she has been featured in numerous mysteries since making "Tomie: Revenge".

'Tomie' Double-Feature

As I've previously mentioned, I'm a big fan of Junji Ito's "Tomie" horror comic book series. I keep watching the film adaptations of it when I come across others in the long-running series, even if it's a little like Charlie Brown and Lucy's football. More often than not, these films have been disappointments, and I've yet to see one that captured the feel of Ito's original work completely. (But I've yet to see them all... so there's still hope.)

Prevkously, I've reviewed four of the "Tomie" films here on Terror Titans. Today, I'm offering up two more--the very first in the series (which is so awful I originally posted the review to Movies You [Die Before You] See) and the prequel that was helmed by the same director six years later.

Tomie (1999)
Starring: Yoriko Douguchi, Miho Kanno, and Mami Nakamura
Director: Ataru Oikawa
Rating: Two of Ten Stars

Junji Ito created one of the few truly scary comic book series I've read--"Uzemaki." His other famous series Tomie is almost as creepy, although you'd never know it from this astoundingly boring movie adaptation.



"Tomie" is the tale of a teen girl who is the center of violent love triangles where everyone involved ends up dead, including her. And, yes, it's plural, because Tomie is so evil that even death cannot stop her--her body always regrows, even from dismemberment, into an exact replica of when she was at her most beautiful... and then she goes looking for more victims to seduce and lead to destruction.

"Tomie" is an awful movie in every sense of the word. It's slow-moving; it fails to take advantage of nearly everything that was truly creepy in the original source material, so it starts boring and it stays there; is filled with drab characters having inane conversations; spends too much time with characters talking about how horrific things are instead of showing the viewer the horror; and has gore and special effects so awful that Ed Wood is embarrassed on the filmmakers' behalf. Finally, the film seems to assume that the viewer is familiar with the Ito comics series, which is an unforgivable sin in my opinion.

The only reason I suffered through it until the end was because I wanted to review it for here and because I kept thinking it HAD to get better.

"Tomie" would have been a One Star movie, except the actors seem to be doing as good a job as can be expected with the awful script they're working with. I still recommend that you avoid this one.

There are at least six other Tomie movies that have been made since the release of this one, and this is one series where the films get better as they go. Sort of... the series has been hit-and-miss.


Tomie: Beginning (2005)
Starring: Rio Matsumoto, Asami Imajuku, and Kenji Mazu
Director: Ataru Oikawa
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

A transfer student (Matsumoto) brings obsession, murder, and madness to a Japanese high school. Only Reiko (Imajuku) stands unaffected by the horror... or does she?

"Tomie: Beginning" is a little misnamed, at least it was for me. It raised expectations that it doesn't deliver on--this isn't the beginning of Tomie and she remains as mysterious and alien at the end of the film as she is at its beginning--but rather a prequel to the very first "Tomie" film, by the director who made that first film, and he was more on the mark with this outing.

"Tomie: The Beginning" has its title not just because it's a prequel--that reveals the circumstances of how Tomie's head came to be in that grocery bag at the beginning of the first film--but also because it's based largely on Junji Ito's first "Tomie" short story. By staying close to Ito's work, Oikawa managed to correct the error of his first outing where he completely failed to capture the ever-growing oppressive mood and expanding darkness and circle of madness that ripples outward from where-ever Tomie appears. Also unlike the first movie, Oikawa also manages to stage some absolutely creepy scenes, such as the one where the entire homeroom class confronts Tomie in the woods with predictable results, and one where Reiko confronts a second Tomie that has grown from bandages soaked with Tomie's blood. There's also a very nice scene that effectively transmits the mood of Tomie at the center of her maelstrom of madness, with Reiko as the only island of sanity remaining--that, together with the scenes in the woods, are the most impressive moments in the film, as well as some of the most effective translations of Ito's graphic stories into motion pictures.

Unfortunately, Oikawa hewed a little too closely to Ito in this case. The main story, told in flashback, begins literally with the moment Tomie arrives in the classroom. The mounting chaos and horror and madness for the characters would have been more effectively conveyed and more impactful on the audience if a few minutes had been spent showing us how they were all typical teenagers leading typical lives. The in media res approach works for Ito's stories because we usually have a convincing narrator tell us that "we were normal kids" or we get to see glimpses of life without Tomie to contrast against life with her. Oikawa didn't give the audience any grounding in normalcy, and the movie is weaker for it.

I haven't said much about the actors in the film, because there isn't much to say. They all do fine jobs in their roles, with Rio Matsumoto providing one of the best Tomies yet. With this film, she is the sixth actress to play the part, continuing the tradition of a new Tomie in each film. (Even she is replaced for the seventh installment in the series, also written and directed by Ataru Oikawa and shot back-to-back with this one.)

If you like Junji Ito's "Tomie" comics, you will probably enjoy this film. If you're unfamiliar with the property, this might not be the best introduction to the Tomie series, despite its chronological placement. "Tomie: Replay" or "Tomie: Another Face" are far more friendly entry points to the uninitiated, in addition to sharing the honor with this one as being among the best in the series.

'Tomie: Forbidden Fruit' can be left alone

Tomie: Forbidden Fruit (aka "Tomie: The Final Chapter") (2002)
Starring: Nozomi Ando, Aoi Miyazaki and Jun Kunimu
Director: Shun Nakahara
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

The lives of middle-aged widower Kozu (Kunimura) and his lonely, outcast teenaged daugther (Miyazaki) are turned into a morass of nightmares and violence when she is befriended by a new girl at school, Tomie (Ando).


"Tomie: Forbidden Fruit" is the fifth movie based on Junji Ito's supremely creepy "Tomie" horror comics about an unkillable girl/ghost/demon who uses her women wiles to lead men to cause suffering, mayhem, and death whereever she goes. More often than not, Tomie herself dies horribly during the mayhem, but she always comes back from death in ways that are more horrific than the time before.

Like most of the "Tomie" movies, "Forbidden Fruit" never manages to inspire in the viewers the horror and dread that Ito's tales do. In fact, the emotion you'll feel most often while watching this film is boredom. particularly if you've read the comics or seen any other of the "Tomie" films.

There is very little new that's brought to the Tomie tales with this film. The only interesting aspect of the story is that Tomie is two generations of the same family in the film, trying to twist both father and daugther to her will. But this is really too small of an aspect to make the film worth your time.

The film is further dragged down by some very bad choices on the part of the writer and director. Tomie has never come across as the smartest of demons/temptresses, but here she comes across as downright stupid. Early in the film, she tries to get Kozu to kill his daughter "so they can be together like before" but this causes him to turn on her and cleave her skull with an axe--it makes him see her for the monster she is. Later, during the movie's climax, she tries the same trick again. It didn't work the first time, so why does she think it'll work the second time?

To make it even worse, this replay of the "kill your daughter so we can be together" ploy is part of a a final five-ten minutes of run-time that ruins what could otherwise have been an incredibly creepy "happy ending" with both father and daughter gazing upon Tomie frozen inside an ice block while eating potato chips and agreeing on how pretty she is and how much they both love her.

It could be the filmmakers were trying to illustrate that Tomie is all about repeating patterns, but all they ended up doing was screwing up a potentially great ending, a screw-up so bad that it cost the film at least one Rating point, perhaps even two. (Heck, if they'd gone with the movie's REAL ending--with Tomie frozen in the ice block--it could even have lived up to the film's title.)

Although well-acted and featuring moody and well-executed camera work, "Tomie: Forbidden Fruit" is done in by a weak script that fails to live up to the potential of the source material and a desire to heavy-handed drive home the point that there is never a "final chapter" where Tomie is concerned. (BTW, I don't really spoil anything by revealing that Tomie gets frozen in an iceblock toward the end of the film. It's an event that's telegraphed early on, and you'd have seen it coming even if I hadn't mentioned it.)

Tomie carries a grudge like no-one else!

Tomie: Rebirth (2001)
Starring: Miki Sakai, Satoshi Tsumabuki, Kumiko Endou, Masaya Kikawada and Yutaka Nakajima
Director: Takashi Shimizu
Rating: Three of Ten Stars

A group of friends (Tsumabuki, Kikawada, and Endou) are stalked by the undying Tomie after two of them cover up one of her deaths.

"Tomie: Rebirth" is a drab and boring entry in the film series based on Junji Ito's classic "Tomie" horror comics. The characters are uninteresting, Tomie is more irritating than scary, and the chills and terrors are so few and far between so as to be barely worth mentioning. In fact, the post image is more interesting and disturbing than anything in the actual movie.


This sequel is almost as bad as the original "Tomie" movie, being elevated only slightly above it thanks to a creepy plotline where Tomie returns from the dead by possessing cute, innocent Hitomi, and a sequence where Tomie is reborn from the surface of a painting that had been smeared with her blood. These are also the only elements of the film that come close to matching the chills that Ito's "Tomie" comic book tales inspire when read.

"Tomie: Rebirth" is a film you can skip, even if you're the biggest fan of the "Tomie" series on the planet. It's definately not the first of the series you should watch... that should be "Tomie: Replay" or "Tomie: Another Face", both of which are superior efforts to this one. (The "Tomie" films can be watched in pretty much any order; they are indepedent of each other, and they even have all different casts and directors each time.)

(As of this writing, all the "Tomie" movies and graphic novels are out-of-print in North America.)

Tomie returns again and again and again

Tomie: Another Face (1999)
Starring: Runa Nagai
Director: Toshirô Inomata
Rating: Five of Ten Stars

One of the greatest talents to ever work in horror comics is Japan's Junji Ito. His tales never fail to send a chill down a reader's spine, and his style is one that even those who "hate" manga will be able to appreciate. (If you're a horror fan and you've never experienced Ito's work, go immediately to Amazon.com by clicking here and order one or more of his books. You're missing out of pure horror genius.)


Ito's most famous creation is that of Tomie, a mysterious teenaged temptress who makes men and boys fall in love with her and drives them insane so they eventually murder her and destroy themselves. Once the carnage is over and before the horror has subsided, Tomie rises from the dead to start the cycle all over again. It doesn't matter how efficiently her body is disposed of... Tomie ALWAYS comes back.

Ito's comic has been adapted into nine different movies as of this writing and they vary greatly in quality.

The first "Tomie" movie (review here) was so awful and boring that it nearly put me off any others in the series. However, my love of the "manga" tales led me to give what I believed to be the next installment--"Tomie: Replay" (review here)--a try. I'm glad I did, because it's a far superior movie, and it calls attention to a fascinating aspect of the monster that is Tomie that even Ito's original tales did not bring into such clear focus.

However, I recently discovered that there was a made-for-TV (or possibly direct-to-video) effort released shortly after the first theatrical "Tomie" film, "Tomie: Another Face". When I further learned it was an anthology film, it became even more of a must-see for me, as I love that format.

The first tale is what you'd call a "standard Tomie story". It's set in a high school setting, and she's one side of a love triangle with the story's narrator... who has lost her boyfriend to Tomie. Tomie's already dead when the story starts, but she returns to prevent the narrator and her boyfriend from reuniting. This, in turn, leads to some drastic high school romance drama that would give even Romeo and Juliet pause. It's a somewhat dull story, but it's got a punchy ending that more than makes up for its overall tepidness.

In the second tale, a professional photographer, who has spent his professional life trying to capture the image of a mysterious woman he developed a crush on while in school, encounters a young girl who looks just like her. Her name turns out to be Tomie and she agrees to model for him so long as he makes her look beautiful in the pictures. Needless to say, things end badly for the shutter-bug. The creep factor is far higher throughout this segment of the film, and, once again, we're given great ending. Unfortunately, despite being built around an element that's appeared in several Ito stories--photos always reveal Tomie's unnatural nature, as well as the fact that her beauty is barely skin deep--this tale presents her in the role of a tart from the beginning. Tomie just isn't Tomie when she's got make-up caked on and is dancing for dollars in dive bars.

In the third tale, we find another Tomie standard set-up... a nebbish loser is wrapped around her finger, and she uses him as the means to kill someone who is immune to her charms or otherwise onto her evil nature. In this case, the target of her wrath is a former coroner who witnessed one of her many resurrections two years earlier and who has been researching and stalking her ever since. The climax to this third tale is one that Ito himself could have cooked up, and viewers will chuckles with mingle with Tomie's fading laughter as the credits being to role. (And that's not a spoiler.... Come on, you know that no one will ever truly destroy Tomie!)

"Tomie: Another Face" is a solid low-budget horror film. While the cinematography is a bit weak and the shot-on-video feel is flat and all-pervasive, it's got a good atmospheric soundtrack and the cast all give a good accounting of themselves. The choice of the actress to play Tomie (Luna Nagai this time out) is a good choice, better than the actress who played Tomie in the original film, who looked entirely too old. (Luna Nagai may be the best actress I've seen as Tomie yet... she is great at switching between being a simpering girlie-girl and a bitch in an instant. For some reason, each Tomie film seems to have a different actress in the part. Maybe they are used as vehicles for the Japanenese Lindsey Lohan's of the Moment when they are made?)

The biggest drawback of the film is that while it stays true to the themes and overall feel of Ito's Tomie stories--something that it enhanced by the anthology format--at no time does "Another Face" manage to match Ito's work in creepiness factor. They come close at a couple of points, but the filmmakers never quite manage to equal their source material. While this may be partly due to the obvious budgetary constraints it was made under, it is also the fault of the director and cinematographer. Better lighting and tighter editing could have gone a long way to making the film far creepier.

"Tomie: Another Face" is far better than the first film in the series, but you should watch "Tomie: Replay" before you bother with this film. (Or, even better, read some of Ito's original Tomie short stories. (Unfortunately, as of this writing, all English-language editions of them are out of print. Actually, even the DVD is out of print as of this writing. But, Tomie always returns....)

'Tomie: Replay' is a rare sequelthat improves on the original

Tomie: Replay (2000)
Starring: Sakaya Yamaguchi, Yosuke Kubozuka, Masatoshi Matsuo, and Mai Hosho
Director: Tomijiro Mitsuishi
Rating: Six of Ten Stars

Yumi (Yamaguchi) receives her father's journal following his disappearance, and she discovers that a name keeps coming up in it: Tomie. Meanwhile, Fumihito (Kubozuka) discovers that his best friend Takeshi (Matsuo) has become obsessed with a girl named Tomie. An accidental meeting between the teens cause them to combine their efforts to locate this mysterious woman, but when they eventually do, they discover that Tomie (Hosho) is beauty and beast wrapped into one.


After the first, awful "Tomie" movie, I almost didn't bother with this one. That first Tomie film is so bad that I posted my review of it at the Movies to Die Before Seeing blog instead of here.

I'm glad I did decide to watch more Tomie films, as "Tomie: Replay" is closer in tone and approach to the original Junji Ito "Tomie" stories, and it has some thoroughly scary moments in it. It also sheds some light on the character of Tomie, giving her an almost sympathetic side. (I say "almost", because she is a monster, through and through.)

Among the highlights of this "Tomie" film (aside from the above-mentioned effort to add a little depth to the monster behind the perfect beauty), there are some nice sequences involving Tomie "regenerating" in more than one place at once that underscore how deadly and destructive her full potential might be. The film also offers a way to kill Tomie for good. It's something that I don't recall from the comic, but it's something that explains why she keeps coming back from the dead. It's an effective departure from the comics that enhances the source material instead of detract from it.)

The film is not without its flaws, though. The frightening scenes (like when Yumi and Fumihito visit Takeshi's apartment, when Yumi's father resurfaces, and when Yumi finally comes face to face with Tomie) are separated by stretches where the film feels like it is being performed by sleepwalkers. Oddly, Tomie feels like the most alive character in the entire film, because she is the only character that projects energy outside scenes of horror. Despite the extremely low-key acting, the movie never gets boring--there's a sense of tension and dread throughout from the opening scene to the very end.

"Tomie: Replay" is a flawed film, but it captures the work of Junji Ito nicely. I think it's worth seeing. However, I post this, "Tomie: Replay" appears to be out of print on DVD, both as a stand-alone and in a multipack.

--
NOTE: For those who might not be familiar with this film series, "Tomie" was originally a series of comic book horror shorts from Japanese writer/artist Junji Ito. In those tales, Tomie is a mysterious creature that looks like a gorgeous teenaged girl but who inspires the most violent of passions in any man she deals with. Gory murders follow, usually including the death (and rebirth) of Tomie herself. It's a very creepy series and well worth checking out if you enjoy well done horror comics.

If you want to read my review of the original "Tomie" film, click here.