Dear friend,

’twas the night before Christmas,
when on my small screen
some creature was killing, all ghastly and mean

Tomie: Revenge/富江 REVENGE, written and directed by Ataru Oikawa, from Junji Ito’s manga, Japan, 2005 - ⭐⭐½

After the dreadful Tomie: Beginning, I was afraid this next chapter, also written and directed by the helmer of the original Tomie, would be as bad.
Luckily, it’s better. Unluckily, it’s still a mess, starting as a proper J-Horror until it complicates things by making the character’s mythology more convoluted: now Tomie can regenerate by taking over another body as well as living again in the same body (which, in fairness, already happened in the Rebirth film), so then there were two, and they are enemies, but then when one of them dies she stays dead, and the small mole under her left eye appears and disappears and it basically works like the blue verification badge on Twitter.
Oh, and Tomie now actively eats human flesh and bites people’s necks like a zombie or a vampire; this film can’t really focus on anything so there’s also a nice bit of found footage.

Time Cut, directed by Hannah Macpherson, co-written with Michael Kennedy, US, 2024 - ⭐⭐½

Produced by the director of Freaky and co-written by the co-writer of the same film, this is another genre-mixing slasher story that had the misfortune of being released after Totally Killer (despite this script being written first). But it would have lost in the comparison anyway: where Killer aspires to be funny and entertaining, fully embracing its Back to the Future inspiration, this one (which still, inevitably, mentions Marty McFly), seems to want to take a more serious path.
Unfortunately, such seriousness involves keeping the slashing part off-screen and focusing instead on the lead character’s moral dilemma: a very interesting and promising point, that is too quickly forgotten (without any explanation), making the whole movie collapse under its own indecisiveness.

Retribution/, written and directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Japan, 2006 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

Another serial killer investigation for Kōji Yakusho. I’m beginning to grasp Kurosawa’s style and visual language, so it’s no surprise that this film, besides the inevitable comparison with Cure, also reminded me of Pulse. I liked a lot the direction the plot decided to go, and the explanation of the mystery, but I’m less on board with the very end of the story. The lady in red is very unsettling, and her appearance in the corner in one of the scenes is just delightful cinema.

Serpent’s Path/蛇の道, directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa, written by Hiroshi Takahashi, Japan, 1998 - ⭐⭐⭐½

Yep, another Kurosawa film. The original version of Serpent’s Path, written by the screenwriter of Ringu (which came out in the same year), also prominently features a girl in a video recording shown over and over again. But this is a different kind of horror, and it’s harder to watch not because of what’s on the screen, but because of some narrated descriptions. A less successful film, that still displays great directing choices.
Of course, I’m curious about the French-language remake Kurosawa released in 2024 (no idea where to watch it though).

Strange Darling, written and directed by JT Mollner, US, 2023 - ⭐⭐⭐⭐

This movie had a limited theatrical release in Belgium, so I had to wait for it to be available for rental. I’m so glad I managed to stay away from any information about it so I could fully enjoy it unfolding. It’s one of those films that let you understand what is going on moments before it tells you explicitly, and that’s a magical sensation (I think I audibly gasped as my brain put two and two together). A great performance by Willa Fitzgerald and also by Kyle Gallner, severely underserved by the Smile franchise.