Onibaba

During a sweltering summer in 14th century Japan, a mother and her daughter-in-law survive by murdering lost samurai and selling their armor for food. That is, until a suitor comes between them. As their relationship unravels in a blaze of lust and distrust, the film’s stark black-and-white cinematography, tense, percussive score, and supernatural liberties push Onibaba into an impressionistic mode of storytelling, one that is erotic, disturbing, and surreal. Bodies thrash through sinister waist-high grass, corpses pile up and begin to rot, and still the air grows thick with desire. Part folk-horror, part social critique, part cinematic rendering of Noh theater, Kaneto Shindō’s pivotal piece of ‘60s Japanese cinema is a feral phantasmagoria that defies easy categorization.