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It's Tomie time once again, this time with Tomie: Rebirth. Well, OK, it's time for me to struggle with the case for half a freaking hour, but now it's time for it. By the way, since watching the last one, I've had a chance to actually read the original manga here. It's... pretty different. The third movie was actually pretty much directly based on it, while the others were pretty much totally original. This isn't a bad thing though. See, much as I dig Junji Ito, the Tomie manga was the very first thing he ever did, and it kinda shows. Theart's really weird in places, and it doesn't quite tap into that existential horror his later stuff does. Mainly, the manga just focuses on the regenerating aspect, and taking it to weird places. Lots and lots of half-formed Tomies, sometimes attached to rocks like lichen while waiting for enough organic matter to wander by to eat and properly grow, some fun with grafting them together, which, yes, yields a hideous tangled mass of bodies, because it's not a long running Junji Ito manga if you don't eventually see one of those... but anyway yeah, I'm rambling.
Here we start off with Tomie having someone paint her portrait, not liking it, defacing it, and getting murdered. Which, you know, is about as typical a situation as he can get. The next day though, he comes back to his painting, sees some of her spilled blood bubbling away on his easel, and starts fingerpainting all over the defaced painting with it, crazy style. Now here's a karaoke bar with a blacklight. Uh... we going to focus in on a character or two here? No, I didn't say have them start talking, I said focus in. Like, literally. Push the camera in closer to these people's faces so we can see them. Oh OK, here's our crazy artist moping in the corner. Then Tomie wanders in and has a seat next to him. A crowd forms, he gets all possessive, she's all "Well gee, aren't you a clingy little murderer." Then she proceeds to ignore everyone as the fight over her, which is a lot more amusing in context then it sounds. Oh and creepy artist goes and kills himself in the bathroom.
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So... you know, by this point in the series, it's hard to blame Tomie for manipulating themselves into killing themselves now and then. The basic obsession madness murder cycle that happens like a law of nature around her can get pretty darn tedious. Also, rather than stick with the director of the third one, we seem to have passed the torch off again to someone who does not particularly know what he's doing. I mean, it's not public TV bad like the first two, but the colors are so washed out it looks like it's always super foggy and the camera work's just kinda boring. Anyway though, painter had had a friend help him bury Tomie out in the woods (because, you know, what's just what you do), and he caught a glimpse of her face both then and at the bar, so he goes back to dig up the body and make sure. While he's doing so, Tomie comes up behind him and goes "Looking for me?" Then she complains about how, seriously, being buried sucks, bugs always crawl around in her mouth and whatnot. So he freaks out and picks up the shovel, she's pretty much just "Geeze? Already with this?" He kills her, reburies her, heads out to a different bar. She shows up a little bit later, and she's all " So yeah, like I was saying, you came by looking for me right?" Then she notices he's there with his girlfriend and just starts totally messing with them, pretending he's cheatng on her with her and such, and saying she was attached by some punks earlier and he just hid, just kinda being a snarky jerk. Now see, it's moments like this that keep me coming back to this series. Our "monster" here just got murdered and buried in the woods twice by this guy, so to get revenge, she gets his girlfriend mad at him. In any other sort of horror movie, it'd be the other way around. How dare you slightly offend me? I'm murdering everyone you know! Here? Hey jerk! Killing me there was totally uncalled for! You owe me an apology!
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Anyway, Jerkface here goes over to his dead artist friend's house, meets his mother who's all half-crazy from grief, and starts looking for clues... and... somehow he walks into a flashback. Like seriously, he walks around he corner, there's artist friend there painting Tomie, and he's all looking all dumbstruck... although it then transitions to a proper memory of him finding him staring at the corpse. He then checks out the painting he was playing with, and... he pretty much revised it into the sort of weird head and a half deal you get in pictures of Tomie. This is enough to tip him off,so he's going to investigate more. Meanwhile, Tomie's off frelling with some new guy's life, also from the party there, messing with his mom, getting her to burn her with a cigarette, getting him to bandage her hand up, then immediately taking it off and going "Oh hey, turns out it wasn't that bad!" Asking her if she poisoned the coffee she gives her later... and here's some other girl also seeing the painting. Or maybe this is his girlfriend finding it after he took it home. See, when you make your whole movie all washed out and blurry, and almost never give a close-up of anyone's face, it's kinda hard to tell who's who.
OK yeah, pretty sure this is indeed his girlfriend. Here's his sister messing with her head too out of boredom. And here's a bunch of stuff focused on the relationships of some barely established characters we can't make out. Yeah... this movie here is not exactly what you call good. It's more what you call... really really dull and meandering. Next one should be better though, it's by special guest director The Guy Who Did The Grudge. Which I don't think I've ever seen, but he has cameos in Tokyo Gore Police and Vampire Girl Vs. Frankenstein Girl, so in my book he's awesome by association. Well hey, New Boyfriend is going all Howard Hughes trying to make sure he can't smell any non-Tomie scenes and freaking out at his mother, that's kinda something. And here's said mother sneaking into her bedroom and strangling her with a belt. Incidentally, the easiest way to tell a good Tomie movie from an unwatchable one really seems to be pretty much entirely based on how much dialog Tomie gets. In this case, pretty much none. This bit here's pretty weird though. So mom's in the bathroom getting ready to dismember the corpse, New Boyfriend wanders in, "Oh hey, did I wake you?" Tomie being, for the moment dead though, he's switched from obsessive to just half-zombie-crazy and decides to help. After a bit, Tomie's severed head just kinda starts watching and humming quietly on a nearby shelf.
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... and then Guy Who Knows What's Up's girlfriend freaks out in the middle of the night and spontaneously sprouts Tomie's beauty mark... which completely fails to make any sense, and really makes me wonder if whoever wrote the script to this one has paid any attention to the many previous works explaining how this stuff works. Tomie isn't some kind of possessing ghost, she's just some kinda mutant flatworm. Here's a Tomie head with stubby little muppet arms crawling out of the dumpster to mess with these two some more. Mom grabs her by the hair and carries her off and she's all "Hey, what gives? That hurts. I'm just messing with you after all! Hey, Boyfriend, are you really going to let your mom burn me in the furnace?" He is though. "Well, see you later then." I guess this is going to be one of those times that works, maybe. Now we're back to focusing on boring characters though... and oh! Both these dudes helped bury Tomie in the woods! I didn't pick up on that earlier because there really only seemed to be the two people there and one was presumably the painter. That explains why both of these two seemed to be remembering it now and then.
So... we're apparently trying to rationalize things with... Tomie-tainted lipstick? Uh... OK. That's stupid and doesn't really work. By the way, you know what would be nice about now? Some kind of like, climax to the story or something. By my estimation we've got maybe 10 minutes left here. Instead we've just got... OK, Girlfriend slowly turning into Tomie, and Crazy Guy there possibly murdering his mother (or maybe she just happened to die of a heart attack, they're a bit vague), and him stuffing the lock of Tomie hair he kept for some reason into the mouth of her corpse to plant a new one, but then he goes ahead and sneaks off to make out with Girlfriend-Tomie while he waits. Yeah, this still isn't a climax. This is just some stuff happening. Stuff which has already been done better in previous movies may I add. And it still isn't going anywhere. Dull dull boring stuff we've seen before. Lalala, this movie sucks and isn't entertaining. Will you just go ahead and end already?
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OK yeah, we have now completely abandoned the source material. We've just got this monsterifying girlfriend using her psychic link with the vampires to lead the hero to a possessed painting before it kills his little sister thing, which absolutely does not at all work with the established rules, or for that matter personality, of what have going on here. OK, we're reigning it back in some, but now we just have some guy failing to be seduced by hopped out of painting Tomie, and that goes against established rules too. I swear, I'd be sodone with this series right now if I didn't have a good feeling about this last one.
OK so short version, Painting-Tomie gets set on fire, Crazy Guy decides he wants in on that, Girlfriend-Tomie gets dragged off into the woods, they jump off a waterfall so they can be together in heaven or whatever before she finishes changing into a much more interesting and likable character. Which is a terrible excuse for resolution, but at least now every character is dead, so at least there's closure. Oh wait, Little Sister didn't die. She swings by to toss in some memorial flowers, Tomie's hand reaches out to catch'em and is "Hey, thanks!" Which I guess is us attempting to do a sequel hook or something but... you totally don't have to do that with this series. That's... kinda the whole point even. Anyway though. Tomie: Rebirth. A more or less unwatchable disgrace that drags the series through the mud and totally misses the point. I know it doesn't come across because of how I always paraphrase it, but even the Tomie Snark was lacking here. Meh. Just one left to go in the boxed set though!
