I watched some of the later sequels in the Tomie series a while back and found them to be wild and entertaining for the most part. When I discovered the original flick, based on the Junji Ito novel, was streaming on Shudder, I knew I had to check it out. While It’s not nearly as crazy or memorable as some of the sequels, I have to say it definitely has its moments.
A crazy one-eyed student keeps the mewling puking head of a girl named Tomie (Miho Kanno) in a box. She gets better (that’s a simple way of stating she her body grows back) and goes out for revenge on the one who decapitated her. Meanwhile a young woman named Tsukiko (Mami Nakamura) is undergoing hypnotherapy to recover repressed memories of an accident that took the life of her parents. Little does she realize she’s the next one on Tomie’s hit list.
Tomie grabs your attention right from the get-go with a fun opening where the dude is carrying Tomie’s head around in a bag. Later, he upgrades to a box, and the scene where he feeds her is reminiscent of Basket Case. Once she grows her body back, the film turns into more of a slow burn. The stuff with the chain-smoking detective is hit and miss too.
I did like the way the director Ataru Oikawa showed the carnage from a crime scene in such an offhand manner. I’m specifically thinking of the way the camera casually panned to show coroners moving a guy with an umbrella shoved down his throat in the background while the detective walks around. I also dug the way he avoided showing Tomie’s face for much of the movie.
While Oikawa delivers a few offhand moments of occasional creepiness, he doesn’t quite know when to kick things up a notch. The finale isn’t bad by any means, but it certainly suffers in comparison to the film’s opening moments. Still when it works it’s a reasonably effective flick. Ultimately, the highlights are just too few and far between for me to give it a hearty recommendation.
Oikawa later went on to direct Tomie: Beginning and Tomie: Revenge.
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