The Mouths Review (2026 Fantasia Film Festival)

Four University Pals with complex connections embark on a late-night “courage test” to visit a graveyard with a mythical cursed tree. For one of them, Ann, it proves too much, and she becomes a gibbering wreck. The friends then witness a supernatural entity, leaving them shaken and running for the hills.

When Ann disappears the next day, the others try to track her down; however, a spectral presence is now hunting them. Horrifying visions torment them as it becomes ever more apparent that what happened that fateful night has changed them all forever.

Takashi Shimizu (JU-ON) reclaims the J-Horror baton to revisit his relentless ghost formula of broad-daylight terrors and unsettling geometry, encased in a fragmented storyline. All of his signature trademarks are used to unsettling effect in this adaptation of Sesuji’s manipulative novella “A Questionnaire About the Mouth”. The legendary filmmaker is on somewhat of a creative charge this year including another title Village of Eight Gravestones, showcasing at Fantasia 2026.

The film’s title converges three separate meanings. The mouth as a conduit for misleading narratives, a contorted portal for supernatural embodiment, and the intense visual focus of the cameras gaze. There is also an argument suggesting that it highlights the concept of one entity being emptied into another, similar to a river discharging its waters into an ocean.

The framework of this refreshingly stripped back horror flick seems superficially simple. Yet, as the central event is relayed in the form of police interviews, both talking heads style and on a sound recording device, discrepancies and confessions reveal an increasingly complex chain of events.

Takashi Shimizu supplements this with CCTV footage and flashbacks to disorientate the audience and set up a shocking finale. Every time you let your guard down, he attacks the senses with masterful set pieces that creep up like cinematic assassins. Notably, a library manifestation involving a humble water bottle and a superbly executed sequence in a moving car.

The group of friend’s are brilliantly cast and impossibly good looking, making mincemeat of the overly melodramatic screenplay. Eminently watchable, they interact with a believable chemistry during the set up phase and display potent chops during the sweat dripping hysteria that follows.

As stated in the opening titles of the film, there is a questionnaire to complete at the end. It’s both hilariously bizarre and strangely foreboding. Inviting the audience to break its passive contract with the movie and risk contamination from its cursed clutches is an act of unadulterated theatre. One that crystalises its genre roots and harks back to the horror gimmick heyday of William Castle.

Beautifully shot and gleaming with artistic dynamism the economic run time glides towards a climax that nestles ominously in the nebulous space between the spiritual and the temporal. It’s a solid comeback from a director who knows his apparitional onions, yielding lucrative rewards for J-Horror purists craving a stylish fix of suffocating dread.

★★★★

North American Premiere at Fantasia Film Festival on the 26th of July 2026 / Rihito Itagaki, MOMONA, Shido Nakamura, Keito Tsuna, Ai Yoshikawa / Dir: Takashi Shimizu / Shochiku/Pony Canyon