The Mouths walks suspenseful, if not familiar J-horror ground (Fantasia 2026 review)
J-horror veteran Takashi Shimizu (The Grudge) is back with an atmospheric and thrilling feature, The Mouths, based on the novella A Questionnaire Regarding Mouths by Sesuji. Though the film deals with some familiar J-horror motifs and tropes, including a black-haired ghost and grudges, it's still a largely effective horror movie with some unsettling imagery.
The premise entails a group of four college friends who drive out to a rural area to see a large tree with gnarled branches that's apparently haunted. Again, we've seen plenty of movies before that focus on young people meddling with something they shouldn't. However, what makes this film unique is its unconventional narrative. Each of the friends gives their version of the story in front of the camera, and a detective listens to their testimony and depositions. It begins with Shota (Rihito Itagaki), who describes the drive out to the tree and what they encountered when they arrived, including a walk through a creepy graveyard, where they dared each other to touch and face the tree, which is covered in cicada shells. Again, we've seen this premise regarding foolish young people plenty of times before, but the setting goes a long way in establishing an eerie atmosphere and foreboding tone. It's evident immediately the friends should have turned around and drove back home.
While Shota and his best friend Tatsuya (Keito Tsuna) make it out alive, Tatsuya's girlfriend, Ann (Ai Yoshikawa), goes missing. Eventually, we learn through Shota's voiceover narration and then Tatsuya and Shota's girlfriend Mirei's (Momona Kasahara) voiceovers that Ann eventually remerged but then killed herself after a brief stint in a psych ward. We hear more about her fate from the testimonies of two other students who also visited the tree, the mean-spirited Hotto (Shoot Mori) and Kawase (Tomoki Nishiyama). Their narrative is presented in Blair Witch- style found footage.
Through these various narrations, we eventually learn the full effects of the tree, including how it can essentially grant curses. We also come to understand more about each character and their true intent. In that regard, the movie also unfolds like a mystery, with some spooky imagery at its center, including a reoccurring black-haired ghost of a woman who apparently hung herself at the tree. There are some well-crafted scares throughout the film's lean runtime, including one that involves Mirei in the library. It's one of the most effective scenes in the film from a horror perspective and it takes its time building tension before the scare lands. This is also very much a movie about what's spoken, and that idea is reinforced by the frequent close-up of mouths that Shimizu includes late in the film.
The Mouths has a few images and motifs that are common to J-horror, including in Shimizu's previous work, but the film is still an effective ghost story with a experimental narrative style that's glued together by a hard-boiled detective trying to solve a case that has no straight answers. The movie is bolstered by its spooky atmosphere, stunning shots, and well-crafted scares.
The Mouths just screened at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival.
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