A man wearing an eye patch hurries down a busy street clutching a rumpled paper bag in his left hand. A pedestrian traveling in the opposite direction bumps up against the man's cargo, causing the carrier to stop dead in his tracks and frantically inspect the contents for damage. He pulls out a plastic grocery bag and closely examines it. Impossibly, an orange tinted eye peers back at him through a gash in the side of the plastic bag.

This unforgettable scene kicks off Tomie, an excursion into the more biological side of Japanese horror. The Japanese have made an art form of terror stemming from illness, viruses, parasites, and grotesque perversion of the human form. Falling somewhere in between the more supernaturally charged viral scares of the Ring series and the outright physiological depravity of Tetsuo The Iron Man, the first film adaptation of Junji Ito's popular manga (there are a total of five movies based on the girl who won't die) provides a delightfully disturbing, if thoroughly confusing experience.

Tsukiko, a recent high school graduate, cannot sleep. Seeking help, she visits a hypnotherapist who hopes to unearth repressed memories surrounding an "accident" Tsukiko was involved in years before. While under hypnosis, she utters a name: Tomie, a name she has no recollection of when conscious. A police detective approaches the hypnotherapist with questions regarding a case he is investigating: the multiple murders of Tomie Kawakami. Police records dating as far back as 1860 (now that's an organized police department) track multiple unsolved homicides in which the victim was named Tomie Kawakami. Even more peculiar, in every case no body was ever recovered.

Not only that, but Tsukiko's downstairs neighbor(our friend with the eye patch from the first scene) is tending to the thing in the grocery bag, a thing that is rapidly growing into a woman. This woman has a hypnotic control over men and answers to the name Tomie...

Tomie is a textbook example of style over substance. Dialogue ranges from inane to philosophically vague. Background characters are zero-dimensional, and the story itself is frightfully non-linear. However, Otaru Oikawa’s direction is pure bliss, soothing the viewer with gentle lighting before giving a cinematic kick-in-the-head of rapid cuts and deep shadows. Tsukiko’s nightmares of her "accident" truly feel like a bad dream, and Tomie’s speedy growth from a severed head to a full-grown woman (with an interim pupa state as an unseen thing in a box) is genuinely creepy. However, most of the characters you simply don’t care about, hoping that Tomie will have one of her man-slaves dispatch them before they get any more unlikable.

But all sins are forgiven when Oikawa pulls another trick out of his hat, be it the Evil Dead-esque reanimation of Tomie’s headless corpse, or the scene of Tomie’s murder taking place in a completely black set, or final friendship giving way to flares...the movie is visually striking. Sure, we may not be completely aware of what the hell is going on (I wasn’t, anyways) but you’ll enjoy your ignorance all the same. Of extra note is Miho Kanno, the actress who played the eponymous Tomie: her sadism and eerie laugh make her a villainess who can go toe-to-toe with Sadako from the Ring or Asami from Audition any day.

Despite its claim on the back of the case, Tomie is presented in a non-anamorphic 1.85:1 widescreen aspect ratio, with decent results. Colors are well saturated, and there was no artifacting, although some print damage popped up now and again. The Dolby Digital 5.1 Japanese track (with removable English subs) was clean and used the surrounds effectively without overwhelming. Extras are minimal, and include a "making-of" featurette (which is even more confusing than the movie!) and trailers for all five Tomie movies, which are being dribbled out over the next few months by Adness America.

If you don’t like Japanese horror, Tomie will only cement your dislike even more. It’s beautiful and confusingly edited, rife with metaphor. However, for those with a little more cultural appreciation, it’s a pleasantly creepy little flick.