Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman (2007)

 

Director: Kōji Shiraishi

Screenplay: Kōji Shiraishi and Naoyuki Yokota

Cast: Eriko Sato as Kyōko Yamashita; Haruhiko Kato as Noboru Matsuzaki; Chiharu Kawai as Mayumi Sasaki; Rie Kuwana as Mika Sasaki; Sakina Kuwae as Natsuki Tamura; Yûto Kawase as Masatoshi Kita; Saaya Irie as Shiho Nakajima

A Night of a Thousand Horror (Movies)

 

An urban myth in real life, the slit-mouthed woman or the Kuchisake-onna is a figure of a woman with a mouth sliced open from ear to ear. She can be documented at least back into the Edo Period¹, but the version I was first aware of is the modern interpretation most will picture even if you do not know that name. That of the woman who cross paths with at night or by yourself, a medical mask concealing the Chelsea Smile, who asks you a question of whether she is still beautiful, and the punishment of slashing or killing someone even if you say yes. She has had a few films about her, one from 1996 (Kuchisake-onna), and hilariously Carved was beaten to the punch by erotic pinku cinema with Kannô byôtô: nureta akai kuchibiru (2005). Carved itself comes with the issue, however, that it is not really a Kuchisake-onna tale, among the many questions to prod the film by Kōji Shiraishi, a figure you may know for Sadako vs. Kayako (2016), the very campy Ring/Ju-On crossover film, for Noroi: The Curse (2005), or the infamous Grotesque (2009), a film from the "torture porn" era of films which is infamous as a rare film banned by the British Board of Film Classificators in the late 2000s into the modern day, which is a rare thing to transpire at all. 

 Welding scissors, the slit-mouthed woman here is targeting children in one community, leading to a school wisely having the kids leave class past noon with their teachers getting them to their parents safely. For one female teacher though, Kyōko Yamashita (Eriko Sato), she discovers that one student Mika is being emotionally and physically abused by her mother, something this new teacher is going to have to psychologically deal with, as her reaction leads to Mika being taken by the Kuchisake-onna and that Kyōko herself is a divorced mother who lost her child after hitting her. This is where an elephant in the room is there, the concept having uncomfortable gender politics as, rather than a Kuchisake-onna, this is a ghost of an abusive mother who possesses mothers to get her deeds done. This concept is appropriately creepy - a woman, all mothers here, can suddenly develop cold-like symptoms, then suddenly be changed into this figure, with the horror that, alongside being used as a puppet for the task, if anyone thinks they have killed the ghost, the body left is that of the poor unfortunate woman whose children now have no mother. It is a really ghoulish and disturbing concept, especially as anyone, including with their own child or another's, can suddenly turn without warning.

It is however an issue, due to how the story tells this, that this all comes within a world where all the depictions of abuse, including the man who claims to be the son of this ghost as an adult, are by women. It does come with a sense of following a theme, but that in itself raises concerns of what would be implied if you do not think critically of this point, especially as our female lead is one of those with this sin in her life. If it was not for this, it would be a fascinating premise, especially as this has the added horror that director Kōji Shiraishi has no qualms with children being killed or maimed in this story, which comes with a warning by adds an escalation.

The concern of what the message is followed by the fact that, truthfully, Carved was not grabbing me at all. The decision to turn the Kuchisake-onna into this figure, the script co-written by the director, makes no sense, and the film should have remained its own concept, as nothing about the urban legend really makes sense for what is perfect for its own fictional urban legend tale of a child catching boogieman.  The idea of this folklore legend targeting children makes sense even if the Kuchisake-onna was the point to have - one version of this legend, which likely helped its growth in the modern day, was of how at the end of 1978 in the town of Yaotsu in Gifu Prefecture, a rumour of a woman with the slit mouth being seen, by an old woman in a farming family, blew up from a local newspaper on the subject to various interpretations of the figure even nationwide². The concept even makes sense for an urban legend for young adults or adults to be wary of, as imagining in the nightlife of Japan, you could accidentally cross paths with something or something that is dangerous to you. Befitting my obsession, something about Japanese horror films I have brought up in reviews like as an obsession of mine, with how their public urban environments have an inherent atmosphere, this type of figure or an entirely original one targeting young children in a small town makes sense, and nothing in the premise in either case is bad.

What we get is pretty conventional here instead, not latching on the idea of an urban myth, and even if this had been a tale of a child catcher tale without its slit-mouthed selling point, it really lost me after a while. It becomes very convoluted, having to keep the tropes of the legend still canonical to this figure, but with little real need for them. Also, how for itself an obvious and interesting premise, that of the ghost of abuse, does feel a mess in logic too neither is helped by it revealing uncomfortable presumptions of what its message is in terms of motherhood. Knowing a lot of this is just meant to be violent entertainment that did not think this would be considered makes this worse, as even if Kōji Shiraishi came to this as a nasty horror film, as this could have danced a lot more carefully around this subject, and honestly just taken a few directions in opposite creative choices, either into the world of figures like Sadako the director would direct a film of, or something much more darker and uncomfortable. As it is, Carved really benefitted from none of its aspects in result.

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1) Legend of Kuchisake-onna, for The Business Standard.

2) Japanese Urban Legends from the “Slit-Mouthed Woman” to “Kisaragi Station”, with interview and text by Itakura Kimie and published for Nippon.com on December 27th 2019