Takashi Shimizu is back with another Japanese horror film, and considering this is the bloke who directed Ju-On: The Grudge, I was always going to pay attention to The Mouths, originally titled Kuchi Ni Kansuru Enquete – the title makes it sound like we’re going to get something completely fucking bonkers involving mouths, teeth and people being eaten alive.
But, that’s not really what this is about, as the film seems more interested in what comes out of people’s mouths than what goes into them, with a group of university students giving conflicting accounts of a terrifying night involving a cursed tree, a missing girl and a ghostly woman.
A Cursed Tree Is Where This Goes Wrong
The basic idea is wonderfully simple – four university friends decide to visit a supposedly haunted cemetery in the middle of the night after hearing about a cursed tree standing in the forest.
Obviously, this is a brilliant idea.
They turn up at the cemetery, discover that the place is considerably creepier than they expected, and even the deafening sound of cicadas adds to the atmosphere, and then Ann starts behaving strangely, babbling things that don’t make sense, and the others have to physically drag her back to the car, where the following day, Ann has disappeared.
That’s when everything really starts going to shit by the sounds of things, as the remaining students begin experiencing terrifying visions of a female ghost and are forced to confront what actually happened during their trip to the cemetery.
But the clever bit is that we aren’t simply given one straightforward version of events.
This Is Basically a Japanese Horror Rashomon
One of the things that keeps coming up in reviews of The Mouths is the comparison to Rashomon, and I think that tells you much more about the film than simply calling it another J-horror movie – the story is built around different testimonies and contradictory versions of what happened, meaning the film gradually becomes a mystery about who is telling the truth, which is a much more interesting way of approaching a familiar supernatural setup.
And because these are university students who have deliberately gone looking for a cursed location because they fancy scaring themselves, there is also that lovely horror-film problem of people doing incredibly stupid things and then being surprised when the horror actually happens.
Shimizu Is Having a Busy Year
This is another interesting one because 2026 is turning into a pretty big year for Takashi Shimizu, as not only has he directed The Mouths, he has also directed The Village of Eight Gravestones, which is another Japanese horror mystery based on Seishi Yokomizo’s famous novel – both films were selected for Fantasia 2026, meaning Shimizu has managed to turn up at the same festival with two very different Japanese horror films.
He’s obviously done plenty outside Ju-On, but there is something reassuring about seeing him back with creepy ghosts, cursed locations and people making terrible decisions after dark.
That’s basically the Japanese horror starter pack.
The Source Material Is Really Interesting
The film is adapted from Sesuji’s novella A Questionnaire About the Mouth, which is a pretty unusual little horror book in itself – apparently the original book is only around 60 pages long, and the physical edition is unusually small, even smaller than a smartphone, with the cover dominated by a disturbing close-up of a woman’s mouth.
That’s a brilliant bit of trivia because it explains why the film has had to expand what is essentially a very compact horror story into an 89-minute feature, and there is another connection here that I really like.
Sesuji also wrote the story that became Kinki: About a Place in the Kinki Region, so if you’ve watched Kinki and thought the whole thing had that strange Japanese horror feeling of discovering something through fragments of information, The Mouths comes from the same writer.
That’s not exactly a sequel or anything like that, but it’s a nice connection between two very odd pieces of modern Japanese horror.
Trailer
The Cast Is Worth Paying Attention To
The film stars Rihito Itagaki, Keito Tsuna, Ai Yoshikawa, MOMONA and Shoot Mori, with Shido Nakamura also appearing – Itagaki plays Shota Murai, one of the students caught up in the aftermath of the cemetery incident, and the character is left carrying a huge amount of guilt over what happened to Ann.
There is also an interesting bit of casting with MOMONA, who is part of ME, appearing in the film, alongside actors including Itagaki and Nakamura, which gives the film a mixture of younger performers playing the students and more established Japanese actors, which fits the structure because the story is essentially about different people trying to explain the same horrible event.
It Looks Like Proper Old-School J-Horror
You’ve got a cursed tree, a haunted cemetery, a creepy female spirit, students making questionable decisions and something supernatural that doesn’t seem remotely interested in explaining itself.
But then Shimizu adds the conflicting testimonies and mystery structure, which gives the whole thing another layer – some early reviews have described it as creepy, slow-burning and confusing, while others have compared its structure directly with Rashomon, as mentioned.
That split actually makes me more curious rather than less, because I would much rather watch a weird Japanese horror film that takes a few risks than another completely predictable possession movie.
The Release Has Already Taken It to Festivals
The Mouths opened in Japan on July 3, 2026, and runs for around 89 minutes, and it has also been selected for some pretty significant genre festivals, including the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival and Sitges, which gives it a much wider international life than simply being another Japanese theatrical horror release.
And I think the timing works nicely.
We’ve got Shimizu back, we’ve got a tiny horror novella being turned into a feature, we’ve got the writer behind Kinki, a cursed tree, a missing student and a story where nobody’s version of events can necessarily be trusted.
Oh, and a title called The Mouths that sounds like it should be about something completely different.
I’m sold.
Check out these other Japanese horror movies too.
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