Known for creating and directing the Ju-On franchise, including the American remake starring Sarah Michelle Gellar, Takashi Shimizu is back with two brand new films, both of which screened at Fantasia International Film Festival. While I didn’t get the chance to watch Village of Eight Gravestones, which had its world premiere on 28th July, I was able to see the North American premiere of The Mouths.
Shota Murai (Rihito Itagaki) and his university friends—Mirei (Momona Kasahara), Tatsuya (Keito Tsuna), and Ann (Ai Yoshikawa)—decide to give themselves a proper scare by checking out the supposedly cursed tree that resides in a haunted cemetery deep in the forest. Once there, Shota discovers the large, bare tree in all its glory—covered in cicadas which engulf him in a deafening chorus. Taking it in turns to visit the tree, things quickly spiral out of control when Ann doesn’t return. Her friends find her covered in mud and clinging to one of the branches, mumbling strange words and behaving erratically. When Ann disappears the following day, the others are haunted by terrifying visions of cicadas and a ghostly female figure pertaining to the tree.
The question of what happened that night is what Chief Kusakabe is trying to uncover as he listens to recordings of the surviving group recounting their story. The film illustrates these stories to us with flashbacks or in talking head style interviews outside of Kusakabe’s tape recorder. We are also introduced to new characters Kawase and Hotta who also visited the cursed tree. The pair recorded their adventure on their smartphone, which included Hotta pushing Kawase and calling him names for being scared—but they were both left them terrified by what they found just behind the tree.
Adapted by Masahiro Yamaura from Sesuji’s novella “A Questionnaire About the Mouth,” The Mouths stays true to J-horror in its visual style as it blends tropes of pale ghostly women with long black hair and wide eyes with found footage, a detective plot, and the interpersonal drama of its young characters who are experiencing deep regret thanks to the jealousy, manipulation, and overall toxicity that exists within their relationships. The film features many eerie sequences, the best of them taking place at the cursed tree, and another involving a creative scene with Mirei in the university’s library. It relies less on jump scares and more on creating dread in the film’s atmosphere, which it achieves effectively. The interview segments themselves capture the actors in close-up shots which centre their strong performances and allow the audience to feel the terror they feel. This seems to compensate somewhat for the characters’ lack of personalities, each of them having no interests at all.
The Mouths is a story about how word of mouth keeps legends and curses alive and engaged with. In the film, a journalist explains that curses gain power because people give them power. Yamaura’s screenplay interweaves its characters’ stories in a way that is unique and well-managed, but sometimes confusing and exhausting. In exploring several accounts of what happened that night, The Mouths ultimately leaves its audience to determine what they think happened as more information is quickly revealed during its third act. There’s also a questionnaire at the end which invites the audience to engage further with the themes and perhaps even partake in the film’s very curse, a unique conclusion taken from the novella.
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