A police investigation into the murder of high school student Tomie Kawakami uncovers a history of mysterious deaths of girls with the same name going back to the 1860s. Detective Harada tracks down a classmate of Tomie named Izumisawa Tsukiko, an art student who is being treated for amnesia. She has no memory of the 3 month period around Tomie’s death, and is starting to suspect the cause might be supernatural. Meanwhile, Tsukiko’s new neighbor, her former high school teacher, Yamamoto Tanabe is rearing a peculiar baby-like creature. Over the span of a few weeks it grows into a beautiful teenaged girl with orange eyes and responding to the name Tomie Kawakami. And Tomie will not die.
TOMIE is a film based on the super popular manga by the same name written by Junji Ito, and just from hearing what the awesome manga contain you'd think it would be one helluva film... well unfortunately, like so many times before, the movie does not even compare to the book. The flick came out in 1999, one year after the brilliant RINGU, and has spawned a number of sequels to date. All of you reading this and who are used to watching Asian horror knows that Asian films often have a tendency to "take their time" before delivering the goods. And that's of course fine just as long as we do get the goods at the end, and that's the major problem with TOMIE; we get nothing except for a very slow-moving film. It takes about one hour before anything remotely interesting happens, and when it finally does it leaves you with a bitter taste in your mouth.
What's somewhat pissing this writer off here is that Ataru Oikawa had so much to work with borrowing a brilliant novel from Junji Ito and turning into a film... it's actually crazy just how much he missed out on. TOMIE could've been one scary mother, moving at a decent rate and making young adults piss their pants outta fright but instead, as it is now, it could be used instead of taking a sleeping pill since the film pretty much provides the same effect. Maybe I'm a bit too hard but it just angers me when you see potential in something and some random guy comes along and screw things up.
 
The story follows Izumisawa Tsukiko who suffers from amnesia that was brought on by a traumatic experience. She also suffers from insomnia and are having dreams about some headless girl called Tomie, and dreams of herself covered in blood as well. What she doesn't know is that her former high-school teacher Tanabe has moved in to the downstairs apartment just below hers and has a plastic bag with him with some kind of creature living in it. It doesn't take long before that creature has grown into the shape of an 18 year old (murderous) girl that is beautiful and goes by the name of Tomie.
As for the acting it is not really bad at all and the actors do well with what they have to work with, it's just that the film itself doesn't work. Another thing is that it looks really cheap and was obviously shot on a very low budget, which also is quite a shame. As for gore and scares TOMIE really doesn't have much to offer. There are a couple of scenes where a the body of a headless girl moves around and even though it looks quite cool it is just not freaky enough, and definitely not worth watching the whole film for for that matter.
To be completely honest, TOMIE is quite a drag to watch as it takes forever before anything happens and when stuff actually do happen it is just not good enough. If you want good Japanese horror, this should definitely not be your first hand pick.
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ALTERNATIVE TITLE:
MOVIE YEAR: 1999
DIRECTOR: Ataru Oikawa
WRITING CREDITS: Ataru Oikawa, Junji Ito
GENRE: Horror
CAST: Miho Kanno, Mami Nakamura, Tomorowo Taguchi
COUNTRY: Japan
RUNTIME: 95 min
RATING: 3/10
Tomie Website/IMDB Click here
Tomie Trailer Click here
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