Carved (film)
| Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman | |
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Japanese release poster
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| Kuchisake-onna | |
| Directed by | Kōji Shiraishi |
| Produced by | Saori Yabe Shuntarô Kanai Hirokazu Kokago Takafumi Ôhashi Kayako Hanamura Nobumasa Miyazawa Yoshimitsu Yoshitsuru |
| Written by | Kôji Shiraishi Naoyuki Yokota |
| Starring |
Eriko Sato Miki Mizuno Haruhiko Kato Kaori Sakagami |
| Music by | Gen Wano Chika Fujino |
| Cinematography | Shozo Morishita |
| Edited by | Shûichi Kakesu |
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Production
company |
Twin Co. Ltd.
Tornado Film Memory Tech Earl Grey Film |
| Distributed by | Tornado Film Tartan Films Ace Deuce Entertainment Splendid Film Tartan Video USA |
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Release date
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Running time
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90 minutes |
| Country | Japan |
| Language | Japanese |
| Budget | $34,666,853 |
| Box office | $45,999,000 |
Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman (口裂け女, Kuchisake-onna) is a 2007 Japanese horror film written and directed by Kōji Shiraishi, and co-written by Naoyuki Yokota. The film is based on the Japanese urban legend of Kuchisake-onna or Slit-Mouthed Woman.
As stories about the Kuchisake-onna ("The Slit-Mouthed Woman") spread through a Japanese town, an earthquake causes a corpse matching the entity's description (a woman with long hair, a trench coat, scissors, and a white mask) to break out of a closet in an abandoned house. As that occurs, Noboru Matsuzaki (Haruhiko Kato), a teacher, hears a voice ask "Am I pretty?" At a playground, a boy who had gone looking for the Kuchisake-onna with his friends is grabbed by the creature, which vanishes with him.
The boy's disappearance prompts the school where Noboru works to send the students home in groups, escorted by members of the staff. Mika Sasaki is reluctant to go home, admitting to a teacher, Kyôko Yamashita (Eriko Sato), that her mother hits her. Kyôko (she has a troubled relationship with her own daughter, who lives with her ex-husband) becomes agitated when Mika says she hates her mother, causing Mika to run away, right into the arms of the Kuchisake-onna, whose appearance was again foreshadowed by Noboru hearing a voice ask "Am I pretty?" As the Kuchisake-onna leaves with Mika, Mika knocks her mask off, revealing the woman's disfigured face.
At school, Noboru shows Kyôko a photograph of a woman who looks like the Kuchisake-onna. Noboru hears the voice again; as he heads toward it with Kyôko, he tells her that the picture is thirty years old. Noboru traces the voice to a house, and he and Kyôko save the boy inside from the Kuchisake-onna, who Kyôko kills with a knife. The Kuchisake-onna's body turns into that of a neighboring housewife, revealing the Kuchisake-onna acts by possessing other women, whose infection is signified by them developing a cough.
Noboru tells Kyôko that the woman in the photo is Taeko Matsuzaki (Miki Mizuno), his dead mother, a sickly and unhinged woman who would physically abuse him and his siblings. One day, Taeko "disappeared" after killing Noboru's siblings, and after that, rumors and sightings of the Kuchisake-onna began. Noboru again hears the voice of the Kuchisake-onna, who has possessed the mother of Mika's friend, Natsuki Tamura. Natsuki is taken to the Kuchisake-onna's lair, where the Kuchisake-onna cuts her mouth, and murders the boy she had abducted from the playground. Mika cuts the ropes binding Natsuki, who escapes, but is too traumatized and injured to help with the search for Mika.
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