The legend is said to originate with a young woman who lived hundreds of years ago and was either the wife or concubine of a samurai. She is said to have been very beautiful but also very vain, and possibly cheating on her husband. The samurai, extremely jealous and feeling cuckolded, attacked her and slit her mouth from ear to ear, screaming "Who will think you're beautiful now?"

"The Slit-Mouthed Woman", released as "Carved" in the USA by Tartan Video, uses the Kuchisake-onna urban legend as its source. The version presented here is a modern day account in which the atrocious acts of the legend (jealous husband disfiguring wife), occurred 30 years ago. The Kuchisake-onna is transformed into the evil spirit of a mother who abused and killed her children because she was mentally disturbed from what I could understand.

Midoriyama, a present day Japanese suburban town, is the target of The Slit-Mouthed Woman and as parents, teachers and officials try to understand and solve the mystery of children disappearing, we begin to see a pattern forming about the town's dark secrets and slowly realize that perhaps they are fighting a losing battle - perhaps this is one ghost that will not be easily exorcized, if at all!

Like in most J-Horror films, the actions of the past, haunt present day society with a curse that (as the "Ringu" and "Ju-On" series indicate), are insatiable. The spirit will always be angry and vengeful regardless of how many victims fall prey to it, and "Carved" keeps that tradition going with this urban legend of "The Slit-Mouthed Woman". Usually the vengeful spirit is an innocent person who was murdered in the past, but this is probably the first J-Horror film I’ve seen where the person was already evil to begin with. Why that is, is never explained.

She roams around the city, usually in public parks and school yards, wearing a surgical mask concealing her, well, she's called "The Slit-Mouthed Woman" for good reason! When she encounters someone, a potential victim (and I have something to say about those "victims" below), she will ask them the question: "Do you think I'm pretty?" while simultaneously removing her mask to reveal her mutilated mouth.

This is a very creepy film to watch - those yellow eyes, that slit mouth and that dark eerie house is unsettling enough without the extra added bonus of what I found most disturbing about "Carved" - the violent treatment of children! In most horror films, the victims are usually not all that nice and pure anyway, so they kind of deserve what they get, but innocent children?

Most of the really violent acts took place off camera. Well, sort of - you could still see what was being done, just not up close, but what your mind can conjure up can be more alarming and frightening than what the director may have initially been thinking of.

I don't understand why children were the object of the spirit's retribution because the film never gave an explanation or motivation for these attacks on them (at least none that I could see). All that aside, you have to admire a film that takes these kind of risks - to treat an audience to something that sets itself apart from the usual Asian horror fare. It was risky, brutal and uncomfortable yes, but I still found it effective and very entertaining in spite of the issues I had with the treatment of children.