I’m no gatekeeper, but if the name Takashi Shimizu doesn’t mean something to you as a horror fan, you might be doing movies wrong. The veteran writer/director of the Ju-On (The Grudge) series of films as well as dozens of others over the last twenty years have made him a J-horror mainstay and an indelible voice in the horror community.
With his newest film, Fantasia selection The Mouths, Shimizu and screenwriter Masahiro Yamaura adapt “Kuchi ni Kansuru Anketo” by horror writer Sesuji using the Rashomon technique of multiple perspectives to tell the story of a group of university students who visit a cursed tree in the middle of a graveyard and the horrific fates that befall them. This act is presented as a social media-fuelled test of bravery, demanding that each participant walk right up to the looming, oozing tree by themselves while a ghost is said to emerge from its branches. As is usually the case, there are inconsistencies and contradictions in each of their accounts but as we hear each of their testimonials, common details and a thread of truth begins to emerge before reaching its shocking climax. The film is meticulously structured, with each character taking on a deposition about a portion of the chronology. Shota (Rihito Itagaki) talks about the drive to the graveyard, while Tatsuya (Keito Tsuna) and Mirei (Momona Kasahara) recount the disappearance and transformation of Tatsuya’s girlfriend An (Ai Yoshikawa), who also tells her tale firsthand. Though all four students reach the tree and return to the car, Mirai tells us that An touched the tree and returned having been changed, only to commit suicide in a mental ward a few days later. We also hear from two other students, school nerd Kawase (Tomoki Nishiyama) and his bully Hotto (Shoot Mori) who undergo the same bravery challenge later and approach the tree, only to find An in the cicada and goop-laden branches looking like the kind of zombified apparition one expects from a Shimizu joint. Tying it all together is the framing story of the alcoholic but obsessive detective Kusakabe (Shido Nakamura) who studies the testimonials via a portable audio player and acts as an avatar for the audience, gradually coming to the realization that the students’ stories don’t quite jive.
Yoshikawa’s performance as An immediately puts her into the conversation of one of modern J-horror’s most compelling antagonists. Her wild-eyed stares from the branches of the cursed tree are instantly iconic, especially when paired with Shimizu’s use of cicada imagery and high-pitched chirping that not only rang through my own house, but between my ears long after the movie was over. Rather than (only) punctuating the movie with moments of shock, there’s a disquieting hum underneath everything that kept me on edge the entire time. Visually, the film dotes on the titular mouths before switching to a voiceover format as the depositions unravel. Beyond that, the imagery of the tree give it enough life to be its own character, and the oozing liquid expelled from the branches and the cicadas that make it seem as though the bark is alive and pulsating add to its aura. I really appreciated how distinct each character was from the next, giving each their own unique voice and cadence that emphasize the importance of reading beyond what comes out of their mouths to express their particular biases and the twists they put on the story.
There are elements of Shimizu’s Ju-On and his other work here, but it never felt derivative to me. One thing that sets it apart from those J-horror classics is a very playful sensibility even as it’s mapped onto a rigorously-structured format. This constrained chaos both amplify and obscures the stories we’re told and the twisted truths that lie just beneath.
At the same time, we’re invited to mentally disentangle all this and solve the mystery ourselves and to this end, the film concludes with something I can’t remember seeing in any other. Before the credits roll, there’s a short quiz for the viewer that asks questions about the viewer’s interpretation of the events of the film, explicitly asking you to consider what you’ve just seen and what you’ve taken from each of the students’ testimonials. It feels like navigating through a convoluted maze, or maybe a thorny patch of brambles or something. If you watch it with others, I think it’d be impossible not to discuss the twists and tragedies that befall Shota, An, and the gang.
And that’s the kind of horror – the kind of movie in general we need more of. Less mindlessly-consumed and more engaging and compelling, even if part of that engagement is the piercing sound of a cicada burrowing into your brain. We’re left with the idea of rumours and innuendo being as damaging and as scary as any supernatural apparition. With The Mouths, Shimizu packages all this in a way that’s fun even when it feels like it shouldn’t be. And true to form, driving us directly into the mouth of madness.