Onibaba Review
Brimming with ambient dread and sensuality, director/ writer Kaneto_Shindo's Onibaba masterfully evokes a world of grinding desperation, feral lust, and otherworldly menace. In a patch of tall swamp grass at the edge of a war, an old woman and her nubile daughter eke out a miserable existence of killing and scavenging. When her threadbare subsistence is threatened by the presence of a rakish neighbor, the old woman tries to frighten the girl with a frightening mask. The end of the film, when her plan fails tragically, is both horrific and brilliantly absurd. In many ways, this film is similar to Kenji_Mizoguchi's masterpiece Ugetsu (1953), a supernatural drama about women struggling to survive during wartime. Yet, while Mizoguchi's characters remain self-effacing and self-sacrificing, Shindo's are aggressively sexual, brutally violent, and thoroughly amoral. Onibaba is a visual tour-de-force, featuring sumptuous black-and-white cinematography, elegant horizontal camera movement, and a stark, claustrophobic visual style. It is a hypnotic, profoundly spooky work that will haunt you long after the credits roll. Jonathan Crow, Rovi
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