“It definitely makes you wonder truly who is the real monster in the situation.”
Director Yûta Shimotsu is describing events in a new episode of live-action J-horror anthology show Strange: Junji Ito's Tales for Sleepless Nights, but he could be referring to almost any episode.
The award-winning manga artist of the title, whose macabre short works are adapted into disturbing 30-minute bites, has a way of blurring lines between protagonist and antagonist amid his surreal nightmares.
Tales for Sleepless Nights aired its 12-episode first season on TV Tokyo this summer, and now HBO Max is bringing those eerie frights to US audiences. The first two installments “Lovesickness (Part 1 of 3)” and “The Bully” (previously animated for Netflix’s Junji Ito Maniac) are currently available, but New York Comic Con fans were treated to the US premiere of the episode “Face Thief” based on Ito’s story “The Face Burglar.”
“Face Thief,” which was previously turned into a Japanese TV movie in 2000, follows the new girl in school, Machida (Nanami Yamazaki), who encounters a weirdly clingy classmate named Kamei (Anna Hoshino). After she sees an identical-looking girl in class who claims she is not related to Kamei, Machida learns this changeling’s MO: “She befriends cute girls then steals their faces.” Indeed, Kamei’s face begins shifting during close conversations with Machida. This repulses the new girl at first, but when Kamei scares away some bullies by growing a third eyeball on her cheek, the two start to bond.
We will not spoil the outcome, but the filmmaker turns it into a biting critique of the conformity and peer pressure common in Japanese society.
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