Onibaba (Demon Woman)

This was supposed to be my Halloween entry but I was busy this past couple of weeks so better late than never.

A visually arresting film about survival and the unquenchable human desire that can lead to horror, "Onibaba" or "Demon Woman" is an entertaining Japanese erotic horror  film that fascinates, haunts and seduces you making it more than an ordinary horror flick.

The story starts in 16th century Japan in the midst of the Civil War, an elderly woman (Nobuko Otowa) and her daughter-in-law (Jitsuko Yoshimura) make ends meet by killing stray samurais who gets lost in the susuki grass swamp they live in. The susuki grass fields are a perfect deathtrap for their unsuspecting victims, they kill them off and strip them of their body armors and valuables to sell them for bags of millet to the local black market dealers then dump the bodies in a deep hole.

The neighbor Hachi (Kei Sato) who went off to war with Kichi, the old woman's son and the husband of the daughter-in-law arrives one night and informs them that he was killed by 20 farmers. The old woman  finds it hard to accept that her son has just died and things get more complicated when Hachi looking like a more scruffier and less threatening version of Toshiro Mifune tries to stake his claim on the naive but voluptuous daughter-in-law.

The daughter-in-law is hesitant at first but succumbs to the scruffy neighbor consummating their desires, the old woman always suspicious and weary follows her daughter-in-law one night  to Hachi's hut and spies on their lovemaking. The old woman who is also lonely and sexually frustrated (poor tree) tries to seduce Hachi and begs him not to take her daughter-in-law, she gets rejected and tries to find a way to prevent the nightly trysts that her daughter-in-law is enjoying with Hachi. One night she is visited by a defeated samurai wearing a demon mask, he got lost in the susuki swamp and threatens to kill the old woman if she doesn't show him the way back to the main road.

The old woman curious to find out why the samurai is wearing a mask asks him to remove it and show his face but the samurai refuses, he says his face is the most handsome in Kyoto and no ordinary peasant can see it. The old woman trying to satisfy her earthly urges begs but the samurai like Hachi rejects her, she then tricks the samurai by luring him to the hole in the middle of the field and is killed after falling to his death. 
The old woman goes to the hole and forcibly removes the mask revealing not a handsome but a hideous disfigured face, she then uses the mask to scare her daughter-in-law every night to break the nightly trysts they enjoy.

This trickery and deceit will lead to her undoing though as she is surprised to find out that the mask becomes forever attached to her face thus becoming an "Onibaba" or "Demon Woman". The director Kaneto Shindo was able to shoot through the tall high susuki grass that covers most of the landscape that the characters were living in making it more other worldly, claustrophobic and spooky at times.

The human conditions and morale are also challenged where decency and kindness is thrown out of the window, indeed war is hell and this is the world that only the strongest can survive and the old woman and her daughter-in-law is right smack in the middle of it.

The story is also simple enough and it doesn't have the usual plot twists in horror films that sometimes ruin the flow of the story, Shindo directed a film that set out to do it's purpose which is to scare and haunt it's viewers. This is a see film that is definitely worth seeing.

Grade: A