The Beginning of the End (Again)
When you hear Tomie: Beginning, you might think this is where everything started: a fresh, eerie prequel to explain why our girl Tomie keeps popping up like a demonic game of whack-a-mole across an endless franchise. What you actually get is a reminder that some horror series are less “immortal” and more “unkillable cockroach”—no matter how many times you squish it, it just crawls back, grosser and less entertaining than before.
This is the fifth Tomie film, which means the well is already running dry. By the time this “prequel” slithers onto the screen, we’re stuck with the cinematic equivalent of leftovers reheated for the fifth day in a row—lukewarm, soggy, and tasting faintly of mold.
The Plot: High School is Hell (But Boring Hell)
The movie starts with Tomie transferring into a high school, and predictably every boy immediately falls in love with her, including the teacher. This isn’t surprising—Tomie’s whole shtick is that she’s so irresistible she causes men to lose their minds. The real horror, though, is that it’s not even fun to watch this time.
Instead of seductive manipulation and terrifying body horror, we get endless scenes of teenage angst. Boys mope. Girls sulk. One bully gets manipulated into nearly murdering another girl, which sounds juicy but plays out like a bad after-school special.
Tomie eventually kidnaps a couple of mean girls and force-feeds them worms and cockroaches. This should be horrific. Instead, it looks like a rejected episode of Fear Factor: High School Edition. I half expected Joe Rogan to pop out and shout, “If you can eat this cockroach, you’ll win a Walkman!”
By the midpoint, the whole class has turned into zombies—not the cool flesh-eating kind, but the “we’re extras told to stare blankly and mope” kind. It’s less Night of the Living Dead and more Study Hall of the Mildly Depressed.
Tomie Herself: The Femme Fatale That Forgot to Be Fatal
Rio Matsumoto plays Tomie this time, and while she looks the part—pale, mysterious, alluring—she’s about as frightening as a goth girl giving you side-eye at a Starbucks.
Tomie is supposed to be the embodiment of toxic beauty: irresistible, destructive, an immortal parasite feeding on human obsession. Here, she comes off more like a mean transfer student who glares at people and occasionally sprouts an ear that crawls away. That ear sequence should’ve been a highlight—it should’ve been grotesque and unforgettable. Instead, it looks like the props department duct-taped some Play-Doh to a cockroach and called it a day.
By the time she reveals her regeneration powers to Reiko, you’re not horrified—you’re jealous. Who wouldn’t want skin that heals overnight after high school acne?
Reiko: The Only Girl Who Didn’t Get the Memo
Reiko, played by Asami Imajuku, befriends Tomie when everyone else hates her. Why? Because otherwise, the plot wouldn’t exist.
Reiko watches Tomie manipulate and traumatize people, sees her ear grow tiny legs and crawl away, and still thinks, “Hmm, maybe she’s just misunderstood.” This is less a character arc and more an IQ test that Reiko failed spectacularly.
By the end, when she herself becomes another Tomie clone, it’s not shocking—it’s a relief. At least now she can stop pretending she doesn’t know what’s happening and just embrace her new career as an immortal chaos gremlin.
The Boys: Simping to Death
The men in Tomie: Beginning are the true victims. Not because they’re manipulated or murdered, but because they’re written like human paperweights.
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Kenichi Yamamoto: Returns from the first film, spends most of his screentime pining over Tomie like a lovesick middle schooler. Ends up killing Reiko for a regenerating heart, because why not.
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Inoue: A photo club kid whose whole personality is “takes pictures, then tries to kill Tomie.”
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Mr. Takagi: The teacher, who lusts after Tomie in a subplot so uncomfortable it makes Lolita look like Matilda. He gets the final kill on Tomie, which is less cathartic and more like watching a janitor sweep up after a party no one wanted to attend.
The Horror: Worms, Ears, and Yawns
A good Tomie film balances psychological dread with grotesque body horror. Beginning gives us neither.
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Body Horror? One crawling ear and a regenerating wound. Seen scarier stuff in a Goosebumps episode.
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Psychological Terror? The scariest thing here is the teacher trying to flirt with a teenage student.
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Atmosphere? You get dark hallways, dramatic staring, and about forty minutes of nothing happening.
Even when characters die, the film shoots it with all the intensity of a PowerPoint slide. Imagine someone reading aloud a script note that says, “Character dies horribly.” That’s the level of commitment here.
The Reunion Scene: Because We Needed More Padding
Years later, Yamamoto and Reiko meet at a class reunion. Just the two of them, because apparently everyone else had the good sense to die or skip. Reiko clutches a regenerating heart in her bag (like a normal woman carries lipstick), Yamamoto kills her to steal it, and SURPRISE—she’s Tomie now too.
If this sounds climactic, it isn’t. It’s like watching two people argue over leftovers at a fridge, then stabbing each other with a butter knife.
The Final Kill: Swing and a Miss
The movie ends with Mr. Takagi—the creepy teacher—randomly showing back up to kill Tomie. He swears he’ll do whatever it takes to stop her. Sure, buddy. See you in the next sequel, where Tomie pops up again like an unflushable toilet problem.
Why It Fails
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Prequel Syndrome: We know Tomie can’t die, so all tension evaporates.
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Pacing: Feels like a 20-minute short stretched into a 90-minute endurance test.
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Effects: That crawling ear should haunt nightmares. Instead, it haunts your patience.
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Characters: Bland, dumb, and motivated only by hormones.
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Scares: Scarier than algebra class? Yes. Scarier than anything else? Absolutely not.
Best and Worst Moments
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Best: Tomie force-feeding bullies cockroaches. It’s gross, campy, and at least something happens.
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Worst: Literally everything else, especially the reunion scene, which feels like the director forgot how to end the film and just threw a dart at a storyboard.
Final Thoughts: The Real Horror is the Runtime
Tomie: Beginning is less a horror movie and more a high school melodrama with occasional bug snacks. It promises to explain the origins of Tomie’s reign of terror but instead gives us recycled clichés, limp scares, and characters you’d happily feed to the snake from Snakeman.
It’s not terrifying, it’s not shocking, and it’s not even entertaining in a “so bad it’s good” way. It’s just the cinematic equivalent of detention: long, boring, and full of people you don’t want to be around.
