ONIBABA

Part of the NACHTBLENDE special series

“Even the grass in this movie is sexy.” Amra Sheriffdeen on Letterboxd

Sharp-edged black-and-white reeds swaying in the wind, loud free jazz, pure drama in just a few seconds. The opening credits already give us a hint: there will soon be a dead body.

Indeed, the first death cry follows in the first minute of the film, and the second follows immediately. Two dead soldiers lie in the grass, deserters from the terrible Nanboku-chô wars that kept Japan in suspense in the mid-14th century.

The murderers are two women: a young woman and an older woman, daughter-in-law and mother-in-law, as we learn. They live in a poor reed hut; their husband and son, respectively, have disappeared in the war. The women kill to survive: the soldiers' equipment provides them with a few days' worth of food. But the overall situation is brutal and volatile, erupting into wild sex and vicious arguments, and when a strangely masked samurai finally appears, the horror breaks through for good.