Dundead: Onibaba (60th Anniversary)

We're combining our monthly Dundead screenings with our celebration of V&A Dundee's Kimono: Kyoto to Catwalk exhibition with this special 60th anniversary screening of Japanese horror Onibaba. 

Described by The Exorcist director William Friedkin as “one of the most terrifying films I've ever seen” and Mark Kermode as “one of the most haunting and arresting films you will ever see”, the stunning and poetic Onibaba is probably the most celebrated film by prolific Japanese writer and director Kaneto Shindô. 

Evocatively set in a seemingly endless and sinister field of tall grass (shot on location at the Inba Marsh in Japan), the film follows an older woman and her young daughter-in-law who eke out a meagre existence by robbing the corpses of samurai who stumble into the field to die, casualties of a civil war which apparently rages tantalisingly out of frame. The film’s title translates literally as ‘Demon Hag’ and the film has alternately been titled ‘the Hole’ after the bottomless pit in which the two women typically dump the bodies they find. With intense performances by its two leads, there is a thick, sweaty atmosphere of dreadful ambiguity about Onibaba; it is resolute slow-burner, full of subtext and suggestion, nudging ever closer to some taboo-breaking outburst. 

Taking place entirely in this purgatorial world of swaying grasses, it simultaneously evokes both the past and future, conjuring the ghosts of Japan’s feudal history and ceremonial traditions, while the frequent slow-motion incidental footage feels far ahead of 1964, as does its percussive and haunting soundtrack. 

And while black and white may have fallen out of fashion by the mid-60s, the decision to shoot in monochrome yields some spectacular imagery, the softly lit daytime scenes somehow suggesting both pastoral peace and looming menace, while night scenes are bold and expressive. Arguably, the film only really fully tips into horror territory for the final reel, which it does in spectacular, bone-chilling fashion, and those night-time scenes become a masterclass in nightmarish, striking light and shadow.