Student Kawagami Tomie arrives at a new high school were she's welcomed by Matsubara Reiko who seems to be the only one who likes Tomie. All the boys in the class starts drooling over her, and the girls become more and more jealous and tries to do things to hurt her. Tomie uses the male obsession to get revenge on the females, but after some time, everyone figures that she's not human and kills her. Thing though is that Tomie can't be killed and reappears in the class the day after the murder. Something that makes her classmates and even her teacher go insane, and some even commit suicide.
This is the sixth flick in the Tomie series, but you don't really need to have seen the previous movies to understand this one. It's a simple movie that really needs no background, but on the other hand, if you've watched the previous movies, you know what Tomie is all about. Tomie: Beginning was written and directed by Oikawa Ataru, the same man who made the original flick, a flick that I personally didn't think was that good. This one is ok, but really brings nothing new to the scene, compared to the other Tomie movies it's not bad, but it doesn't really stand out either.
The story is told through the eyes of student Matsubara Reiko who was in the same class as Tomie, and who welcomed her when no one else did. So basically she talks to another guy in the class about what happened, and we get to see flashbacks as she tells the story. Tomie was a beautiful girl who arrived at their school, and all the boys became obsessed with her while the girls got jealous. One day some guys from the class tried to murder her, but ended up cutting off her right ear which later growed back out. Reiko as well started to see that Tomie was not human, but still feels sympathy for her and continued to be nice to her while all the others just wanted to do her harm.
Even the class teacher found himself to be utterly obsessed with Tomie, and to make her disappear for good, the whole class killed her and cut her up into 38 pieces. One piece for every student in the class to dispose of. Unfortunately that didn't do any good either, as Tomie came back once again to drive everyone deeper into madness. It's quite a sick scene when they cut her up, not that it's graphical, but that the whole class actually takes part in it and seem like there nothing to it really. A group of school kids hacking up a student to pieces is kind of a horrific thing, but they actually seem happy and not bothered at all about what they do which felt a bit strange to watch.
There's some gore and some spraying blood, but it all looks kinda cheap and is not very scary. Still, it's a good thing that we get some of that as well, I mean, cheap or not cheap, gore is still gore. There are no real scares in the movie, and personally I think it failed with having a creepy atmosphere or any suspense for that matter. There's one scene though that was kinda cool where Tomie's being "reborn", and even though you've probably seen similar things in other Asian horror flicks, it still works quite ok. The acting's not great but it works, and the score was a mess and was just annoying to listen to.
Tomie: Beginning is far from being great, but it's still an ok movie. It has some scares but if you've seen a lot of (Asian) horror, it won't really work that well. It's never slow, and the running time is only 74 minutes so the movie's over pretty quickly as well. An ok addition to the Tomie series, but that is a series that is not that great to begin with. It's not bad, but can't really recommend it either. If you're a big fan of JP horror you might wanna check it out.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 2005
DIRECTOR: Oikawa Ataru
WRITING CREDITS: Oikawa Ataru
GENRE: Horror, Supernatural
CAST: Rio Matsumoto, Kenji Mizuhashi, Yuka Iwasaki
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 74 min
RATING: 6/10
Tomie: Beginning Website/IMDB Click here
Tomie: Beginning Trailer Click here
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