Hanako-san and the Toilet

Hanako-san's ghost haunts the restrooms of many schools in Japan. She appears if her name is called, but you really don't want to do that; especially on a dare, late at night, when her darker, revenge-filled spirit is at full strength. She died from a broken heart, from constant bullying by her peers, and waits patiently for the time when her tormentors will have to go. School children in Japan were so frightened by this urban legend, many could not go alone to the toilet; where Hanako-san patiently waits. It is said that if you listen closely, you can hear her whispered curses echoing softly off the tiles...

Japanese urban legends are engrossing, aren't they? While similar in many respects to American ones, they tease reason loose from the mundane, and play on our fears of unrelenting supernatural evil and contagion, spiraling out of control in a way that uniquely plays off the community and tradition-based culture of Japan. In America, the witch, Bloody Mary, simply rips your face off if you're suckered into saying her name thirteen times out loud, while looking in a candle-lit mirror in the dead of night. In Japan, she'd be the ghost of some mistreated woman who rips your face off, then pops up unexpectedly to rip all of your friends' faces off, then possesses someone close, just when you think it's over, to continue ripping faces off anyone coming into contact with you.

And she would most likely hold a large pair of blood-dripping scissors to squeeze every last drop of terror out of you as she silently floats across the floor in a greenish haze, anxious to snip snip snip your flesh.

Director and co-writer Kôji Shiraishi's, A Slit-Mouthed Woman (released as Carved in the USA by Tartan Video), uses the Kuchisake-onna urban legend as its source. In Japanese mythology, Kuchisake-onna is the evil spirit of a woman mutilated by her samurai husband, who cuts her mouth open from ear to ear as retribution for her infidelity, or pride, depending on which version of the legend you prefer.

In Carved, Kuchisake-onna is transformed into the evil spirit of a sickly mother who physically abused and killed her children. Her obake returns to prey on the frightened children in the small town of Midoriyama, wielding a rusty pair of bloody scissors and wearing a white hospital mask and trench-coat. The white mask, a common sight in Japan, covers the gash that runs from ear to ear, a nod to the original legend, but not quite explained here. The traditional "Am I pretty?" question, which presages violent death for her victims, is also out of place. Instead, Shiraishi and co-writer, Naoyuki Yokota, while keeping the well-known aspects of the legend, alter it by adding abusive mothers as the underlying instigation and perpetuation of the horror that steals children away late in the afternoon to murder and mutilate them.