Review - Tomie Unlimited (2011 - Dir. Noboru Iguchi)

Tomie Unlimited is bonkers. Completely. Wait a minute, that seems strangely familiar. Maybe I've written that somewhere before (Helldriver perhaps?) Tomie Unlimited is bonkers, but it is better than Helldriver. Not by much, but it is better.

I'm not really that sure that it has a plot. Tomie (Miu Nakamura) has it all. Popular, talented and good looking. Then a great big piece of metal piping falls from a rooftop and skewers her, killing her in the process. Obviously. Her family grieves. And then Tomie returns.

What follows is not a great story. Is it a story at all? What you do get are some stunning images. The final images of Tomie's sister framed in a doorway looking at a huge Tomie face through the opening, whilst surrounded by Tomie caterpillars (large black evil caterpillars constructed out of Tomie faces) is an image that will stay with me for a long time. Is there any deeper meaning to the image for me? Maybe it questions the inner turmoil between... Nope, no deeper meaning. But it does look suitably creepy.

The other highlight has to be a headless Tomie, well, I say headless, but she has got this weird flat tumor face where her head should be. It charges about chasing people, chittering all the time. Very similar to the headless corpse in Evil Dead 2, but funny nonetheless.

As you might have gathered there are a lot of different versions of Tomie. At one point there are three different Tomies on screen. This only works well because Miu Nakamura has such a distinctive face.

Don't go into this expecting a story and you'll probably come out quite enjoying the experience. Think of it more as a surreal painting. That moves. With sound. And did I mention it's bonkers?

4/10

evlkeith

If you like this you could also try:

Dark Water, The Ring, The Grudge, Machine Girl.