Carved: The Slit-Mouthed Woman 2007

Haruhiko Kato as Noboru Matsuzaki, an elementary school teacher, finds himself drawn into a town-wide fear when stories of Kuchisake-onna, the Slit-Mouthed Woman, spread like wildfire. An earthquake cracks open an abandoned house and a corpse matching the entity’s description emerges from a closet, setting off a chain of eerie happenings. Noboru hears a chilling voice in the air, repeatedly asking, > “Am I pretty?” and the terror intensifies as, at a playground, a boy who had gone searching for the spirit with friends is suddenly grabbed by the entity.

As panic spreads, the school orders students to head home in groups, escorted by staff. Rie Kuwana as Mika Sasaki is reluctant to leave, confiding in a teacher that her mother hits her. Kyōko Yamashita, played by Eriko Sato, has a fraught relationship with her own daughter who lives with her ex-husband, and Mika’s declaration that she hates her mother only stirs more tension, causing Mika to run away. Later, Mika’s encounter with Kuchisake-onna is foreshadowed by Noboru’s persistent hearing of the haunting voice. The moment the boy is spared from the immediate danger, Mika manages to knock the mask off Kuchisake-onna, exposing the woman’s disfigured face.

Back at the school, Noboru presents Kyōko with a thirty-year-old photograph of a woman who bears a striking resemblance to Kuchisake-onna. The voice returns, guiding them to a house where they manage to rescue another boy from the spirit’s grasp. Kuchisake-onna’s form shifts, briefly becoming that of a housewife, revealing that the fearsome entity can possess women’s bodies, a transformation often accompanied by a telltale cough.

Noboru then reveals a painful truth: the woman in the photo is Taeko Matsuzaki, his deceased mother, a sickly and unhinged figure who abused him and his siblings. Taeko disappeared after those brutal acts, yet her shadow lingers as the Kuchisake-onna legend continues to haunt the town. Miki Mizuno as Taeko Matsuzaki is tied to Noboru’s memories of childhood trauma, a memory that fuels the escalating danger from the spirit.

Kuchisake-onna has now possessed the mother of Mika’s friend, Natsuki Tamura, a development that tightens the circle of danger around the children. Sakina Kuwae as Natsuki Tamura enters the lair, where the spirit cuts her mouth and murders the boy she had abducted from the playground. Mika desperately intervenes, managing to save Natsuki, though the girl leaves the encounter deeply traumatized and injured.

Kyōko and Noboru race to locate Mika in a basement room, where they are subjected to a brutal assault by Kuchisake-onna. In a tense confrontation, Kyōko stabs the spirit in the neck, ending the immediate threat and leaving behind the body of Natsuki’s mother as a grim sign of the danger that still remains. Mika’s mother becomes the new host, and Noboru fights with everything he has, but his injuries prove fatal. Before he dies, he decapitates Kuchisake-onna, convinced that this act will finally vanquish the evil.

Yet the victory proves hollow. The only way to end Kuchisake-onna is to obliterate Taeko’s corpse hidden in the closet. Even after the decapitation, the spirit endures, ultimately possessing Kyōko while she visits her daughter—an ending that hints at a nightmare-like sequence, where the line between dream and reality blurs as the haunting continues. This chilling tale unfolds with quiet dread, layering memories, possession, and the desperate struggle of a community to stop an ancient terror that refuses to die.