Film Review: Onibaba

Based on an ancient Buddhist parable, Onibaba weaves a strange tale of morality, particular to sexual standards and self-survival. Though the story is set in feudal Japan, the message is clearly for the film's contemporary age, as it freely explores the tensions that arise from powerful urges and torturous repressions. In a way, the film seems almost a crux in Japanese society representing a struggle between eastern propriety and western individualism.

This exploration, however, is played with subtly metaphoric terms, imploring the viewer to think carefully about each action witnessed beyond a superficial level. All the while, the main characters' already tenuous hold upon each other continues to tear apart even as they are forced to live together in desperate times. Eventually when one character comes into possession of a frightening demon mask, the enusing manipulation it emboldens causes hatreds and deceptions to rise to the surface as the group descends into madness.

While the pervasive, creepy imagery and its disquieting tone encapsulate a good deal of the film's message, the story itself comes across a bit flat. There is simply not enough consequential activity nor conversation, which could certainly be attributed to a conceit of the story. But this extreme abstraction seems to degrade fundamentally any intended meaning to a point too inscrutable to be universally appreciated.

Score: 6.0