Thursday, October 29, 2020

Onibaba (1964)

IMDb plot summary: Two women kill samurais and sell their belongings for a living. While one of them is having an affair with their neighbor, the other woman meets a mysterious samurai wearing a bizarre mask.
Directed by Kaneto Shindô. Starring Nobuko Otowa, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Kei Satô, and Jûkichi Uno.

This is a very slow build up to a nicely creepy ending twenty minutes or so, and I'm not sure the payoff was quite worth it for me. I didn't particularly care about any of the characters, and conceptually it doesn't really kick off until at least halfway through, if not more. It does have a very atmospheric score, which I very much appreciated, creating a very uneasy tone even when nothing much is actually happening. It does look like there's a fair amount of social and political commentary happening throughout this that I just don't have the context to fully appreciate, aside from general anti-war sentiments. I wish the whole thing was condensed down to a 20- or 30-minute short, but as is I found my attention wandering frequently during most of the movie.

How it entered my Flickchart:
Onibaba < Pitch Perfect 2
Onibaba > As Good As It Gets
Onibaba > Spinning Into Butter
Onibaba < The Deer Hunter
Onibaba > Iron Eagle
Onibaba > My Sassy Girl
Onibaba < The Browning Version (1994)
Onibaba > Wedding Crashers
Onibaba < Frosty the Snowman
Onibaba < Deep Red
Onibaba > Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery
Final spot: #1862 out of 3248, or 43%.

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