Carved: The Slit Mouthed Woman

"Am I pretty?" the slit-mouthed woman asks. The answer: kind of. Take away the glassy eyes and the Heath-Ledger-as-Joker-like mouth, and she's an attractive woman. Even if you can look past those superficial physical characteristics, though, she's a ghost who kidnaps and hurts kids.

It's certainly not the best Tartan Asia Extreme film ("Oldboy"), but it's certainly not the worst ("Marebito"). It creates some moments of genuine eeriness, like when she has three kids tied up in the house with the red roof. The camera focuses on the girl we've seen before, while in the background we see an out-of-focus figure carrying a knife approach the other two children. Creepy. But sadly, that's about it, other than some decent set-up in the beginning. Too much soul-searching towards the end on the part of the main characters, and it slows down.

Some of the lines are also memorable, like when a woman tells her son, "Chop my head off with this." For some reason -- probably because it's Japanese -- it reminded me of the animated film "Paprika," where at one point a character asks, "Who is eating my dream?" and he means it literally.

The verdict on "Carved": it's aight, but it's no "Shutter," another pretty good film from Tartan.