Horror-tober 6: Tormented (Rabbito Hora)

I chose this one this evening because I wanted to watch something fairly short and Joey expressed interest in it and it is always fun to get him to watch horror movies, because I know how much he loves them.

After Kiriko's brother, Daigo, puts a dying rabbit out of its misery and with his tenth birthday approaching, he starts having weird dreams and visions of a giant stuffed rabbit that seem all too real. On top of that, Kiriko's father doesn't seem concerned for either of them. But he is also still distraught over losing Daigo's mother in childbirth, so you can't really be too hard on the guy.

I'm not going to lie, I was intrigued by this one because I wanted to see creepy giant stuffed animals do creepy things. It had that, but the overall story was kind of all over the place, and even though there is a psychological twist, it just didn't really help to explain the finer details of the story. Also pretty predictable. Without spoiling too much, I will say that it did have some good creepy moments. When the cutesy giant stuffed rabbit turns into a more realistic and menacing rabbit and at the end the smaller stuffed rabbit loses its head but then its body crawls off the screen; both of which were a bit unnerving.

Hey, there. Wanna play? Both of these scenes have nice yellow tones too

I just noticed the more realistic giant stuffed rabbit has nipples, that explains some things

The whole time during the movie, Kiriko's father is making pop-up books of The Little Mermaid, not the sweet Disney version, and when shown on screen they are really quite beautiful. It also ties into Kiriko's narrative. She is mute. She lost her voice at some point as a child and it is implied that it was caused by a traumatic event in the past which then affects her situation in the film. Again, don't want to spoil anything for anyone wanting to watch this so won't give away too many details.

The little mermaid creeps into the Prince's room to kill him and get her voice back

In the end she could not do it and dissolves away as sea foam in the ocean

Definitely had some nice visuals and cinematography, but all in all, a little drab and not enough of the creepy giant stuffed animals. Joey gives it 2 skulls and I give it 2.5 skulls, purely for the pop-up books (reminded me of The Babadook, although not creepy like that one).  

Joey's rating:

My rating: