Onibaba (1964, Kaneto Shindō) (Patreon)

55/100

Spent the first hour pleasantly confused, as I'd always understood this to be a horror film but nothing overtly scary or menacing (or involving the demon mask on Criterion's Blu-ray cover) happens for a long, long time. Shindō's recurring shots of susuki grass gently swaying in the moonlight generate a free-floating spookiness, to be sure, and there's also something oddly unnerving about the visual conceit of a thatched hut camouflaged amongst said grasses; unless someone's fetching water, the characters are constantly surrounded by tall vegetation, creating a claustrophobic vibe that's quite distinct from ordinary tales of folks living in the woods. Doesn't creep me out nearly as much as those spindly trees in Kuroneko, and there's some dulling via repetition (rustling has only so much inherent power), but I do recognize this as a triumph of foreboding atmosphere. 

Got me some of them pesky narrative issues, though. Here's one that I wouldn't have  expected to level at a classic Japanese film: Onibaba plays like a Twilight Zone episode bloated to feature length. (It actually bears a superficial resemblance to s5 episode "The Masks," which aired eight months prior to the film's premiere. I'm quite certain that's a coincidence, though.) All of the moralistic irony resides in the home stretch, after the  samurai shows up; prior to that, the film functions primarily as a wheel-spinning melodrama, albeit one in which the wind plays a key supporting role. And the central dynamic just doesn't feature enough variation or complexity for my taste. "Man and younger woman are horny for each other, older woman's not happy about that" can't profitably sustain a full hour no matter how gorgeously evocative the couple's "secret" midnight assignations are. Halloween gets away with such a protracted setup because Michael Myers lurks in the distance throughout, an unmistakable implicit threat. Here, there's really no indication in the film itself of an external bogeyman—not until Mr. Demon Mask's very belated appearance. If anything, it looks very much as if "Onibaba" might go postal, killing one or both of the others in a fit of jealous rage. 

Therein lies my other significant problem with this film. Onibaba feels punitive toward "Kichi's mother" (the character's IMDb name; we never learn her actual one) in a way that makes me uncomfortable. The title itself apparently signifies something like "old hag," and the film ultimately seems repulsed by the notion of a middle-aged woman who can't accept that she's no longer sexually desirable. There's no discernible judgment regarding both women's penchant for murdering soldiers in order to sell their armor—it's  accepted as a wartime survival tactic—but the demon mask inflicts ironic punishment upon those who wear it for immoral reasons: The samurai's vanity costs him his good looks, while Kichi's mother's jealousy renders her even more physically repugnant than Hachi had insisted that she already was. (As an American viewer, I'm unsure whether and how the copious female nudity fits into this. Would Japanese viewers in 1964 have found it unusual that Kichi's mother casually talks to Hachi with one breast exposed, or been surprised by all the shots of both women sleeping topless? Don't recall seeing that in other Japanese films of the period, but then I'm not exactly Donald Richie.) The ending, though somewhat ambiguous, appears to show Kichi's wife leaping over the pit while strongly suggesting that Kichi's mother falls in, presumably to her death. In theory, I support "Hey, overbearing mom, calm down and let the kids fuck" (though Hachi kinda comes across as a sex offender), but it's harder to roll with  "Gross, she's like 40."