Onibaba

[Onibaba] contains effectively extravagant moments sandwiched between, its grunts, groans. and gurgles

Onibaba is a chilling movie, a waking nightmare shot in icy monochrome, and filmed in a colossal and eerily beautiful wilderness.

Too often, it turns out to be a pot-pourri of ravenous eating and blatant sex.

No masterpiece by any means, it's at times overplayed, but it's striking visually, handling swift horizontal movement very well. It's also genuinely erotic.

Although his artistic integrity remains untarnished, his driven rustic principals are exotic, sometimes grotesque figures out of medieval Japan, to whom a Westerner finds it hard to relate.

A creepy, interesting, and visually striking 1963 feature by Kaneto Shindo.

A frenzied pressure cooker of desire: where carnal longing finds itself manifested in both the natural and supernatural world.

Shot in stark, severe black and white, the images seared into the film, with unnerving close-ups and bobbing handheld camerawork, Shindo makes even the waving of the grass look ominous as it all but swallows everyone who enters...

Given its historical setting, visually dynamic presentation, and open-ended conclusion, Onibaba lends itself to interpretation and symbolic readings.

A lush darkness fills every trippy scene in this stone cold (black-and-white) classic of Japanese horror.