After posting about "Noroi", I later that night watched both -- back to back --
Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman and
Carved 2. I had the light on in my parents' room (I was house-sitting), but the rest of the lights in the house were off. I was in the house alone. It's a three-story old house from the 70s or so -- you know, the kind that creak and groan a lot when the weather is cold. Fuck, that was a nerve-racking night. The black cats peering at me over the stairs in the hallway didn't help much either.
The Slit-Mouthed Woman has always been for me one of the creepiest Japanese ghosts I've seen, so I avoided the
Carved films for the longest while, even though I was inexplicably drawn toward them (actually it wasn't inexplicable, I'm a Japanophile). The first one was a bit fucked up and might have been creepier if not for the male teacher hearing her voice all the time. And the earthquake scene was like, "Really? What was that all about?" But oh my god fuck yeah! The ending to the first one was excellent! And the creepiest part was...
...the Slit-Mouthed Woman was just possessing the guy's mom's soul and making it possess other kids' moms' souls. ... That's a bit of a thought-twister there.
The first one was so much better than the second. The second was too... I dunno. Seemed too kitsch. The second started off so corny and had the whole high school sitcom thing dragged out too long that I think it ruined the rest of the movie. It was a bit too predictable, too. ... Actually it was way too predictable. It was obvious the ex-boyfriend was going to ruin the family's lives, although his last scene was ...
A bit disturbing. And the scene where the main girl gets ridiculed in school after her grandpa.... That was sad. But her going around murdering people -- that had nothing to do with Slit-Mouthed Woman. It wasn't even until the dragged-out, ridiculous revenge-fueled ending that she even looked like the Slit-Mouthed Woman.
So I give
Carved 4 stars, but
Carved 2 I give just 2 stars -- it stirred up enough emotions to garner an extra star but was otherwise sub-par.