Despite the massive popularity of his comics in Japan and abroad, no one has really been able to capture the spirit of Junji Ito on screen. The 2000 film version of Uzumaki — recently released on Blu-ray by Umbrella Entertainment — came close, as did the first episode of Adult Swim’s Uzumaki animated series. The rest has been variable, to say the least, which is why Inverse’s interest was piqued when TV Tokyo announced the anthology TV series Strange: Junji Ito’s Tales for Sleepless Nights.
The third episode of the anthology series, “The Rib Woman,” had its world premiere July 22 at the Fantasia International Film Festival in Montreal, and Inverse was present for the screening. The episode is directed by Yuta Shimotsu, whose previous features Best Wishes to All and New Group both dialed in to a specifically Japanese style of weirdness. (Shimotsu is one of three directors working on the series, all of whom are relatively new on the J-horror scene.) Shimotsu’s specialty is incorporating social commentary into bizarre horror tales, which makes him an ideal director for this project. So is it the bizarre Ito nightmare trip we’ve been waiting for? Not quite, but it’s getting there.
