Carved, also known as A Slit-Mouthed Woman, is a ghost story from Japan and with a title like that, how can you not be interested? If that isn't enough, how about the DVD cover blurb that claims: "The most frightening supernatural horror film of the year." All right, I am listening, keep talking. Take the next step and flip the case over. The plot description tells of a woman disfigured by a jealous husband whose ghost terrorized a town decades earlier. It also tells of her ghost wearing a surgical mask, asking if she is pretty, and committing violent murder. Wow. This certainly sounds like a winner! The capper has to be the bleak cover featuring a pale, blue-eyed woman with long hair, a slit mouth, and a pair of rusty looking scissors.
What should have been a slam dunk quickly turned into a 90-minute slog to the finish. This movie tested my ability to keep my eyes open through the dullest of films. I will admit that it opened strong and for a while I could be heard trying to convince myself that it would pay off on the opening, that it was slow and lyrical to great effect. It did not work and I was not right.
Let us begin with the good. As Carved opens we listen to kids, young eight-year-old kids (as opposed to the usual teen/young adult fodder), talking about a town legend. It is the legend of the slit-mouthed woman who appears at dusk to abduct children. One young boy even keeps a note pad log of all the facts he has learned about the urban legend. All of the kids take the legend seriously, to the point that some stay out at a park in the hopes of seeing her. It is always a "friend of a friend" who say her until know.
The woman is back and kids are starting to disappear. What was just an urban legend is all too real and the town reacts as such. A teacher, Kyôko Yamashita (Eriko Satô), is a witness to one of these kidnappings, but she is laughed off by police and put on leave by the school. She teams with a fellow teacher, Noboru Matsuzaki (Haruhiko Katô), who seems to know a little more than he initially lets on.
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