Tomie: Unlimited 2011

Tsukiko Izumikawa Moe Arai is a quiet high school student who shares a passion for photography as a member of the school’s photography club. Her daily routine is built around classes, assignments, and the closeness she shares with her best friend Yoshie Kazuya Aika Ôta. The two girls spend afternoons wandering the halls and streets, and Tsukiko often finds herself watching her elder sister Tomie Izumikawa Miu Nakamura move through the same school with a glow she secretly admires. Tomie is a bright center of attention, especially to Toshio Shinoda Kensuke Owada, a boy Tsukiko secretly crushes on. On a day that begins like many others, Tomie asks Tsukiko to take a few photos of her, hoping to capture something special. As Toshio departs after a brief exchange, Tomie taunts Tsukiko about her jealousy, nudging the boundary between admiration and envy.

What unfolds next is a shock that shatters Tsukiko’s sense of normality. Tomie is suddenly crushed by a steel cross that falls from a nearby building under construction, an act that seems almost unreal in its randomness and brutality. Tomie’s death becomes a living wound in Tsukiko’s memory, and the days that follow are tainted by grief, haunting nightmares, and a nagging sense that something continues to move just beyond the edge of sight.

One year passes, and the Izumikawa home is filled with the ordinary sounds of family life—Masashi Izumikawa Koichi Ohori and Kimiko Izumikawa Maiko Kawakami gather around a birthday cake to mark Tomie’s eighteenth year. The moment Tsukiko thinks she might be beginning to let go, a doorbell rings, and there stands Tomie, more radiant than ever, standing in the doorway as if she never left. The reunion is a strange mixture of relief and confusion for Tsukiko, who cannot shake the feeling that something is terribly off.

Tomie’s return is not a second chance but a spiral of fear and repulsion. She insists on controlling Tsukiko’s feelings, even disciplining her with an act of violence—Masashi uses a steam iron cable to punish Tsukiko for her perceived lack of affection toward her sister. Tomie’s behavior grows increasingly bizarre, and she reveals a terrifying, evolving scar on her neck—a tumor that seems to speak and to twist reality around her. Tsukiko, revolted by what she sees, calls Tomie a monster, a label that only intensifies the sense that something monstrous has taken up residence in her sister.

The nightmare spills into the real world. Kimiko dismembers Tomie’s body in the bathroom, and Tomie’s head is disposed of in a trash bin. Meanwhile Kimiko’s own body becomes a liability in the eyes of Tomie as she continues to taunt and threaten. Tsukiko’s school life becomes unmoored when a new student, Tomie Kawakami Miu Nakamura, arrives, mirroring Tomie Izumikawa in every possible way. During lunch with Yoshie, Tsukiko notices something horrifying in her lunch: miniature Tomie heads with long, sinewy tongues. She flees, but Yoshie’s curiosity pulls her toward the trash, where the tiny heads spring to life and strangle Yoshie, killing her in a grotesque fashion.

Back at home, Tomie’s head rises from the trash, and it convinces Masashi to kill Kimiko and feed her to Tomie. At school, Tsukiko witnesses Yoshie’s neck bearing a tumor, now a deadly sign of Tomie’s influence. In the Judo club’s room, Yoshie’s decapitated head becomes a macabre weapon as the body continues to move. Tsukiko encounters Toshio, who stabs a version of Tomie to death, and from that crimson pool, a new Tomie forms, kissing Toshio with unsettling familiarity. Tsukiko, overwhelmed, kills Toshio and wanders through a corridor of distorted visions, encountering several versions of Tomie who seem to be multiplying before her eyes.

Just as she feels cornered by the multiplicity of Tomies, Tsukiko wakes up in her bed, drenched in relief—until her parents reveal a devastating truth: Tsukiko is an only child, and she never had a sister. The relief is short-lived, because the dream lingers as a prophecy. Masashi begins to eat hair, and Kimiko’s head stretches in an impossible, upside-down arc, signaling the return of Tomie’s grotesque influence on their world. The family’s fear escalates into a chilling realization: Tomies, regenerative and beautiful humanoid beings who respond to the name Tomie, are overtaking Japan, and their appetite for living bodies appears insatiable.

The family’s attempt to protect themselves hinges on a horrifying plan. Tomie does not want Tsukiko offered as a sacrifice, and she attacks Kimiko to prevent any more harm from reaching Tsukiko. Tsukiko, confronted by Toshio and Yoshie, learns that their friendship with her was never as she imagined—those two admit they always despised her, revealing themselves as willing to betray her. In a final confrontation, Tsukiko pushes them down the stairs, where they are consumed by the centipede-like creatures that accompany Tomie. A colossal, sentient Tomie head then dominates Tsukiko’s living room as the two sisters—one mortal, one monstrous—engage in a haunting, conspiratorial conversation.

In the end, Tsukiko walks out into the streets of Japan, no longer a single girl but one of many Tomies wandering the city. She encounters another man and is murdered in an apartment, a fatal closure to a life that was once hers. Lying on the floor, she stares into a mirror and sees Tomie’s face looking back, the reflection mimicking the dream version of Tsukiko’s sister. The question lingers—was she ever truly herself, or did she become another Tomie? The final image is a cruel, quiet laugh from Tsukiko, a grim acknowledgment that happiness was a dream that Tomie never allowed to exist.