REVIEW | Lisa Fremont
- Director: Takashi Shimizu
- Writer: Masahiro Yamaura
- Stars: Ai Yoshikawa, Rihito Itagaki, Tomoki Nishiyama, Keito Tsuna
Human memory is fallible and malleable. They say that every time you retell a story, your brain remembers it in the biased manner in which you retold it, and while that is fine for a fun retelling of running into an ex, it is less than ideal when telling the story of what happened when you and your friends visited a cursed tree in a cemetery, trying to conjure up a ghost.
Playing at Fantasia Fest 2026, The Mouths comes from director Takashi Shimizu. Best known for the Ju-On series, he brings his reliable ghost story style to an adaptation of A Questionnaire On The Mouth, a Japanese horror/mystery novella from author Sesuji.
Sesuji’s story centers around four university students who embark on a “courage test”. They travel to a cemetery to visit a very old, very large, and very haunted tree: it is said that the ghost of a woman who hanged herself will appear. Over the years, the lore of this tree went from a place where people prayed to it, but slowly, it turned into a place where people went to wish for the demise of others.
Shota, Tatsuya, Mirei, and An are a tight group of friends with an extremely complicated history that will slowly unfold as each character tells us their version of what happened in the cemetery the night that An goes missing. Utilizing a mixture of found footage, flashbacks, and direct retellings from each character, Shimizu seamlessly blends these various storytelling formats to present a genuinely intriguing and immersive mystery. With the addition of two more university students who also visited the haunted tree, the story slowly, but expertly, begins to show just how deep and nefarious the layers are. While the addition of a police detective investigating the case helps to keep the narrative running coherently, the journalist who becomes involved is simply superfluous and takes away from the overall uneasy feeling that Shimizu successfully crafted.
The practical effects, relatable friendship dynamics, and unique storytelling all make for an engaging tale that, unfortunately, loses a bit of its power in its final moments. And while the questionnaire at the end of the movie is a fun gimmick, it also has the unfortunate side effect of pointing out where the film failed to effectively tell its story. Overall, a great popcorn film, The Mouths reminds us that less is more and you should always be careful what you wish for.
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