A woman stares at a sea of high grass blown by the wind at night, torn between the desire to reach her lover and fear of what might be lurking in there.
A tale of lust, greed, jealousy and deception, Onibaba has the elegant simplicity of legends. Feudal Japan: an old woman and her daughter-in-law murder and rob stray soldiers to survive, dropping their corpses in a gaping hole in the midst of a susuki grass field. When a comrade of the daughter-in-law's husband returns to a nearby hut, she starts an affair with him. The old woman plans revenge using a frightful demon mask found on a dead soldier.
Onibaba is a seminal psychological horror with a bare-bone plot, but a setting and an atmosphere which are as good as anything in the genre.
7/10
A tale of lust, greed, jealousy and deception, Onibaba has the elegant simplicity of legends. Feudal Japan: an old woman and her daughter-in-law murder and rob stray soldiers to survive, dropping their corpses in a gaping hole in the midst of a susuki grass field. When a comrade of the daughter-in-law's husband returns to a nearby hut, she starts an affair with him. The old woman plans revenge using a frightful demon mask found on a dead soldier.
Onibaba is a seminal psychological horror with a bare-bone plot, but a setting and an atmosphere which are as good as anything in the genre.
7/10