If you are a horror fan, you undoubtedly know the name Takashi Shimizu — one of the pioneers of the J-horror genre as the creator of Ju-On: The Grudge, among many other classics of the genre. Although his latest work (one of two screening at the Fantasia International Film Festival), The Mouths, feels like a rather weak outing for the director, it still has enough atmosphere and spooky imagery to not fall entirely flat.
What is The Mouths about?
Based on the novella “A Questionnaire About the Mouth,” The Mouths follows a group of college students who investigate a cursed tree in a cemetery, setting off a chain of supernatural events that turns their lives into a waking nightmare. The question then becomes: what actually happened that night?
The Mouths Review
Unfortunately, The Mouths feels like a bit of an amalgamation of tropes and ideas that many J-horror masters, including Shimizu himself, have already done better. Granted, watching an adroit director like Shimizu go through the motions is a lot creepier and more fun than a significant majority of horror movies that come out in any given year.
Like many of Shimizu’s works, The Mouths is rooted in ideas of Japanese superstition and folklore, but not with a fresh perspective that would have added a much-needed dose of energy to the project. It’s all a series of tropes that we have seen before: haunted forests, vengeful spirits, suicide as the ultimate form of torment.
There are some interesting questions here about virality and groupthink, but again, these are themes that have been explored more effectively in J-horror in the past, going back to the early 2000s and even the late ‘90s with movies like Pulse and Ringu. The film feels like it’s coming out two decades too late to be as interesting or impactful as it seems to think it is.
Because everything about the movie feels so familiar and even derivative, the film struggles to maintain its momentum through its brief hour-and-a-half runtime. The mystery element of trying to figure out the true nature of the events also keeps audiences at an arm’s distance from the characters and story. It is a perfect example of a movie that has a lot happening at any given moment, but you aren’t really invested because it feels like the story is constantly building towards nothing.
The thing the filmmakers seem to think makes The Mouths stand out as somewhat original is the gimmick of a narrative device. The film begins with a title card saying that there will be a survey at the end of the movie, and it does hold up its end of the bargain, “asking” the audience questions on-screen about what they think happened. It feels like a way of forcing ambiguity, reminiscent of a marketing ploy that Anatomy of a Fall once tried. In that case, it felt like a bit of a sell-out; with The Mouths, it at least feels sincere, even if it completely falls flat.
That being said, The Mouths isn’t entirely a wash, if only because Shimizu is one of the greatest creators of horror imagery of his generation. There are some shots in The Mouths that will genuinely send shivers down your spine, and isn’t that exactly what people watch J-horror movies to experience? Like the story, they’re not particularly original ideas, but at least they’re effective and unsettling.
Is The Mouths worth watching?
For those who are fans of the work of J-horror master Takashi Shimizu, The Mouths is likely to be a disappointment because it feels like a retread of stuff we have already seen. Still, it’s genuinely creepy at times, meaning that it does just enough to recommend to fans of the genre.
The Mouths screened at the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival, which runs July 16-August 2.
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