Tomie: Another Face

1999 "Three tales of terror featuring the girl who won't die... Tomie."
5.1| 1h12m| en
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Tomie is a mysterious, beautiful girl you just can't get rid of. She will come to your life from nowhere, and whatever you do, kill her or love her, she will come back to you in the end.

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Also starring Atsushi Okuno

Reviews

ada the leading man is my tpye
Peereddi I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.
Dynamixor The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Bluebell Alcock Ok... Let's be honest. It cannot be the best movie but is quite enjoyable. The movie has the potential to develop a great plot for future movies
MaximumMadness Originally conceived of as a trio of short films for television before being compiled together for its eventual DVD release, "Tomie: Another Face" is an odd chapter in the saga of that lovable and seemingly unkillable demon girl. Released in between the first two installments of the cinematic franchise, it's debatable whether or not "Another Face" even exists within the same continuity and canon as its bigger- budget brethren. With a distinct lack of funding, cheap video cinematography and some truly baffling moments peppered in... it's sort-of the black sheep of creator Junji Ito's "Tomie" media franchise. An awkward foot-note that might be worth checking out for the biggest of fans of the series, but ultimately will be far too odd and unappealing for pretty much anyone else."Another Face" is comprised of three short stories, dealing with the vile Tomie as she destroys the lives of the men around her in different times and settings. The first story involves a high school romance gone drastically sour, the second revolves around a photographer who finds new passion with Tomie as his muse and the third tale regards Tomie sending her boyfriend to kill a mysterious man who is seemingly stalking her. This very same man acts as the bridge between the three stories with brief appearances in all three, and he holds the key to the backstory of the nefarious and devilish force that goes by the name "Tomie Kawakami."I suppose I should make it clear that while not really a fan of the series, I do have a certain begrudging respect for it. It's a franchise with a fiercely loyal and sizable fan-base the world over. And as a fan of horror, it's one series I've made an attempt to track down and view with an open mind, having thus far sat through most of the entries save for the final few. After all... there's gotta be something to it with nine films released so far over the past twenty years. And yet, even after seeing most of them, I don't quite get the appeal. Sure, some entries are better than others... I actually quite liked "Tomie: Replay", after all. But I just don't think the series has objectively risen above the level of mediocrity. And "Another Face" is definitely one of the weakest installments yet.To be fair, there is a certain kitschy appeal to the structure of the final release. By giving the viewer three stories that are connected by a few recurring characters, it breaks up the monotony that plagued some of the lesser films of the series, and it keeps the pacing brisk and flowing. The performances are nothing special, but the actors typically get the job done, and there's a few cool moments here and there that will put a big-ole smile on the face of series fans.But it's to the service of such cheap filmmaking and lazy storytelling, I just couldn't get into this one at all. Maybe it's unfair, but "Another Face" really suffers for its low budget and it creates a certain aesthetic distance between the story and the viewer. And that's coming from someone who has seen and indeed enjoyed his fair share of cheap "shot on video" releases. Heck, I adored "1-Ichi" and that looked like it was filmed on a $200 handy-cam! Here, it feels like director Toshirō Inomata just threw up his hands and opted not to even try to make the most of his limited resources. The cinematography and editing is incredibly amateurish, looking more akin to a first-year film student's work than an adaptation of a major property. And the overall structure and pacing is messy and lacks coherent flow.To top it off, the film also makes some baffling and frankly unintentionally amusing choices in how it presents key scenes, completely betraying any potential impact they might have had. It has all the subtlety of a brick to the face and trades in quiet moments for loud jumps and poorly-framed beats of action too often. I'm not ashamed to admit I had at least two laugh-out-loud moments in each of the three stories. And none of those times were the laughs intentional. There's no way you can see a man in a comical film-noir trench-coat with an eyepatch and a ridiculously giant knife standing all of three feet away from someone he's "spying" on and not break out laughing. It's like they somehow created a self-parody by accident."Tomie: Another Face" is most certainly the weakest of the early entries in the series. A mish-mash of three half-baked short stories that lack any bite and cause more unintentional giggles than intentional gasps... all while being assembled half-heartedly in a dirt-cheap production to boot! It barely musters up a dreadful 3 out of 10 for me. It's one that even fans of the series could probably skip...
Leofwine_draca A shot-on-video anthology released just months after the original film, TOMIE: ANOTHER FACE screams cash-in. It turns out to be an absolutely pitiful film that never overcomes the constraints of a non-existent budget, offering poor writing, direction and acting that neither grabs nor interests.Of the three stories collected here, the first seems to pass by quickly without beginning or end; the second has a little more style but is mostly without merit; the last is the most explicit in terms of (poor) special effects but never feels like more than Z-grade nonsense. It's difficult to fault Runa Nagai as Tomie and it's better than REIGN IN DARKNESS, but those are the only "good" things I have to say about it.
lymanvunk TOMIE: ANOTHER FACE (1999) 7/10 72 minutes Director - Toshiro Inomata Cast – Runa Nagai, Akira HiraiTomie: Another Face is the V-cinema version of the long running Tomie series based on Junji Ito's magna. This would be the director Inomata's only work behind the camera. This low budget J-horror attempt beats the previous and later forays into the character. This is similar to the Ju-On series where the J-cinema adds to the overall creepiness. It is an anthology that has three stories linked together by a man who is hunting down Tomie after having a ghostly encounter in a morgue (the third story). J-horror was still in its infancy when this came out and they were still experimenting with the imagery. Nagai captures the Lolita aspect the character very well and the movie can be seen as a warning with getting involved with young girls. In the second segment where the photographer meets up with Tomie, kills her and then comes back to life, in the scene in the car where her hand reaches from the back seat is very effective. Takashi Shimizu would use this again in Ju-On the Grudge 2 (2003) and the concept of multiplying Tomies (substituting Kayakos) in Ju-On the Curse 2 (2000). Incidentally Shimizu would take over the reins in the next installment Tomie Rebirth (the best of the cinema versions).
Zorknot If you like lots of special effects, fast paced story lines, and lots of startle moments, this is NOT the movie for you. If you've seen the first Tomie this is a lower budget version of that with a sort of made for TV feel. I kind of liked it a little better than the first. I felt I understood what was going on more and it was more spooky somehow. But the people I watched it with didn't like it so much. They felt that nothing really happened.If you have by any chance seen Boogiepop and Others, this movie is incredibly similar to that. It's separated into different stories,there are very few effects until the very end, and the cinematography is strangely off, but at the same time there's more of an emphasis on the story and the more you pay attention the more you get out of it.You'll probably never see this in a theater. It's a scary movie that's not all that scary, an intellectual horror movie that isn't hard to understand, it can work on several levels or not at all. Me, I like odd movies and I don't mind a few imperfections, especially when they add to the oddness, but if you aren't quite the weirdophile I am you may want to steer clear of this.

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