Now Showing: The Crow: Yomi

 

The Crow: Yomi

Genre: Supernatural/Thriller/Romance

Director: Takashi Miike

Writer: Jack Brown

Based on the comic created by James O'Barr

Cast: Mike Faist, Minami Hamabe, Tadanobu Asano, Masatoshi Nagase, Rie Miyazawa, Masaki Okada, Tak Sakaguchi, Emma Appleton

Plot: Jamie Osterberg (Mike Faist) steps off a train in Tokyo, wheeling a suitcase. He arrives on the campus of Seijo University where he is set to work on a graduate degree in mythology. He skips getting settled into his room, instead going straight to the university archive. He studies aged scrolls depicting black-winged crows escorting souls toward a shadowed gate. His Japanese is slightly less than fluent. He calls for assistance. Haruko (Minami Hamabe)  enters with a stack of bound texts. She’s quiet and formal, dressed simply. She watches Jamie struggle to interpret a sutra and gently offers the correct reading. He thanks her awkwardly, fumbling a small bow. She nods and leaves him to his work. 

In Portland, Oregon, Emily Osterberg (Emma Appleton) cleans her tattoo needles when her phone rings. Her brother Jamie is on the line. She teases him for being obsessed with Japanese ghosts rather than girls. Jamie mentions that he met a cute girl at the archives, so he may not be a total embarrassment. 

The next day, Jamie returns to the archive. Haruko is there again. Their conversation begins to extend beyond the scrolls - favorite shrines, ghost stories, childhood fears. She corrects his grammar and he gets flustered. 

The two begin to meet outside the archive. They walk side streets lit by vending machines, visit weathered torii gates, and pause at incense altars for reasons neither explains. On a covered train platform, Jamie speaks earnestly, gesturing awkwardly toward her before stopping himself. 

At night, Haruko rides the subway alone, clutching her bag. Hendra (Tadanobu Asano). in a dark suit leans near the far door. He watches her reflection in the window. When she looks up, he’s gone.

In the mountains, Haruko’s family home sits amid rice fields and cedar trees. She brings Jamie home over a long weekend. Her father (Masatoshi Nagase) eyes Jamie with caution. Her mother (Rie Miyazawa) offers tea in silence. Haruko says little, but her glances toward Jamie are softer now. 

Later that evening, Haruko leads Jamie down a quiet dirt path beyond the rice fields, through a line of willows, until they reach an old, sloped clearing. A single cherry tree sits alone on a hill, petals fluttering in the wind. She tells him she used to come here to hide from the world. Jamie takes off his jacket and spreads it on the ground. They sit together in silence for a long time. Haruko leans into Jamie, resting her head against her shoulder. She begins to unbutton his shirt slowly, carefully. He follows her lead, nervous but unable to look away from her eyes. Under the cherry blossoms, they make love for the first time—tender, quiet, unhurried. When it’s over, they lay in each other's arms, petals drifting down like soft pink snow.  Up on the hillside, a man in a black suit watches from the trees. When Haruko looks up suddenly, sensing something, there’s no one there. 

The next morning, Jamie joins Haruko's father in the garden. The older man offers him a small carved talisman tied with a red cord. Jamie thanks him. The man doesn’t answer. He just walks away down the path. Haruko emerges from the house and smiles faintly as Jamie holds the charm up to the light.

Rain slashes against the glass of the train window as Jamie and Haruko return to Tokyo. He rests his head on her shoulder. She listens to the rhythm of the rain more than the sound of his voice. That evening, Jamie and Haruko cook dinner in her apartment. They laugh softly as he misreads kanji labels and nearly dumps vinegar into the rice. She corrects him without mockery. Later, as they eat on the floor, she casually locks the sliding glass door and draws the curtain tighter than usual.

Elsewhere in Tokyo, a Yakuza club pulses with red light and smoke. Kaoru (Masaki Okada) sits half-naked in a velvet booth, surrounded by girls and empty glasses. His tattoos gleam under the strobe. Sada (Tak Sakaguchi) steps in and leans down to whisper something. 

Haruko leaves for her university job the next morning. Jamie kisses her at the station. She vanishes into the crowd. That night, Jamie walks through a quiet alley carrying food. His phone buzzes—an unread message from Haruko. He doesn’t see the figures closing in behind him. Kaoru moves first, laughing like it’s a game. Sada hits Jamie in the back of the skull with a blackjack wrapped in rosary beads. Jamie drops, stunned but conscious. They drag him into a black van and drive off. Through the haze of pain, Jamie sees two crows following them, hopping between rooftops. He tries to speak but gets a boot to the face. The van pulls into the rear lot of an abandoned onsen on the outskirts of the city. Jamie is dragged through a corridor, blood trailing behind him. When they reach the central bath chamber, Kaoru crouches beside him and pulls out a switchblade. He asks Jamie if he thinks Haruko will cry when Hendra gets his hands on her. Sada and Kaoru dose Jamie in gasoline, slowly and deliberately. Kaoru flicks a match, then puts it out with his fingers, just to watch Jamie flinch. He then lights another and flicks it at Jamie. Jamie screams as the fire takes him.

Haruko wakes in her apartment in a cold sweat. She hears glass shatter down the hall. Before she can react, the front door bursts open. Hendra steps in. She claws at his face and screams. He slaps her once, then carries her out. Inside a desecrated shrine hollowed out beneath a subway line, Haruko is stripped, bathed, and dressed in white by silent attendants in black masks. Her arms are bound. Symbols of Maō - inked eyes, stitched mouths, broken lotus petals - cover the walls. Hendra grabs Haruko by the throat and tells her that his can happen two ways - one with less suffering.  He undoes the top button of his shirt, rolls up his sleeves. She spits in his face. Hendra smiles as he wipes the spit away with his fingers and tastes it. He smiles and dismisses the masked attendants. He circles her slowly, explaining that her resistance only feeds the offering. That her body means nothing if it doesn’t first break. That Maō does not accept what comes willingly - he demands purity destroyed. Haruko tries to stand, but he grabs her by the hair and throws her back down. She curses him through gritted teeth as he begins to unfasten his belt. She kicks at him and scratches at his face before he pins her down. Her head turns to the side and a single tear runs down her cheek, mixing with the blood from her lip as Hendra assaults her. When he's done, Hendra presses a dagger deep between Haruko's ribs, watching as she bleeds out. Her corpse lies in the center of a shrine. The assistants return, piercing iron hooks into Hendra's back. Slowly, he is hoisted above her body. Blood begins to drip from the hooks embedded in his flesh. As he bleeds, he chants to Maō. A crow watching from above lets out a pained shriek. Haruko’s eyes snap open. She gasps, but there is no breath - her soul is gone.  

The abandoned bathhouse is nothing but blackened structure now. The roof collapsed during the fire. The tile walls are cracked, blistered, open to the sky. Only the stone foundation of the soaking pool remains. A crow lands silently atop a splintered beam. Another joins it. Both stare down into the wreckage. Rain begins to fall. The ash turns to mud. A pale hand pushes through a layer of soot and debris. Jamie’s form emerges slowly from the wreckage - naked, burned, skeletal. He collapses on the edge of the stone pool, gasping. One crow hops closer. Jamie looks at it. It tilts its head. He recognizes something - not with words, but with instinct. He knows what he is. He knows why he’s here. Across the ruins, he finds remnants of discarded clothes and wraps himself in a weathered black coat. He doesn’t remember dying. But he remembers why.

Jamie walks through the Tokyo night in silence. The city doesn’t notice him. He stops in front of a ramen stall. His reflection in the window shows a face somewhere between the living and the dead. He drops to his knees. A crow lands beside him.

Kaoru sits at the bar of a nightclub, spinning a knife between his fingers. Kaoru turns just as Jamie smashes a broken liquor bottle across his face. Kaoru screams, falling back, slashing wildly. Jamie doesn’t flinch. He grabs Kaoru’s head and shoves him face-first into the bar’s hot griddle. Kaoru's face begins to melt as Jamie's holds it against the burning surface. Jamie then drives the broken bottle straight into Kaoru’s throat. A crow watches from a light fixture above. 

Emily sits alone in her Portland tattoo studio, closing up for the night. Her phone rings. Jamie's voice comes through the other line. He tells her that he won't be coming back from Japan - he's dead. She doesn't know what to say. Jamie says that he doesn't know how long he has, but that he has to finish something. Emily asks if Jamie is pulling a joke. Jamie hangs up the phone. Emily stare at her phone in disbelief. 

Sada leans back in a velvet booth of a bar, flanked by two girls barely in their teens. He feeds one a cherry from his drink. Jamie enters. Wet from the rain. Silent. He grabs a heavy ashtray off a nearby table and smashes it into the bartender’s head without breaking stride. Sada starts to stand, but Jamie knocks him back into the booth, smashing him with the ashtray. The girls scatter. Jamie drags Sada out into the alley behind the bar. Jamie slams Sada's head into a trash bin, demanding to know where Hendra is. Sada chokes out that Hendra is in the Marunouchi district on the top floor of an unfinished tower - Hendra calls it his temple now. Jamie asks what will be waiting for him inside. Sada, spitting blood, mutters, "Hell." Jamie slams Sada's face into the asphalt several more times until there is nothing left but pulp and skull fragments. 

Hendra kneels before a statue of Mao. A laptop screen crackles beside him. Surveillance footage loops: Kaoru's body slumped on the floor of the nightclub, jagged bottle sticking out of his throat, blood pooling on the dance floor. Hendra watches it silently, rewinding the moment when Jamie enters the frame over and over again - believing his eyes must be playing tricks on him as Jamie could not still be alive - Mao has not willed it. Across the room, Haruko's body jerks, more marionette than woman. Her skin is pale, her lips colorless. A shimenawa rope hangs around her neck like a leash. Hendra approaches slowly. He whispers that Jamie has returned from the dead, or something else is wearing Jamie’s face. He wonders aloud what it means - perhaps the old gods are testing him. He tells Haruko that the final ceremony will need to happen sooner. That her vessel will not last forever. He strokes her cheek, then tightens the rope slightly with a flick of his fingers, just to watch her blink. He smiles. Hendra turns back to the laptop. He rewinds the footage again.

Jamie stands across from a black monolith of a building rising above Minato. Two crows land on a lamppost beside him. One of the crows caws once, then flies toward the tower. Jamie follows. Jamie takes the elevator to the penthouse level. He takes deep breaths on the trip up - thinking back on images of Haruko. When the doors open, he finds a gutted penthouse taken over by Hendra's temple to Mao. Jamie first sees Haruko, eyes open but lifeless. Hendra then steps out of the shadows, ceremonial hooks already embedded into his flesh. His body is covered in self-inflicted cuts, each one shaped to mimic the crow’s wings. He smiles when he sees Jamie, telling him that he made it just in time for Mao to accept his offering. Jamie doesn't flinch. The crow screeches from above. Jamie slowly moves closer, eyes scanning his surroundings. He circles Hendra in a silent rage. Hendra moves toward Haruko. Her head twitches slightly as she recognizes Jamie's presence, but there's still not emotion in her face. Hendra tells Jamie that Haruko has already been offered to Mao - her soul was shattered in the ritual, just her shell remains, beautiful as it may be. Hendra tells Jamie that he will now offer him to Mao as well. Jamie moves without warning, lunging across the space and tackling Hendra into a pillar. Hendra draws ceremonial dagger, swinging it at Jamie, grazing his ribs. Jamie barely reacts. He hurls Hendra into the altar, snapping part of it in half. Candles scatter, catching fire to the space. Hendra rises. He pulls two hooked chains down from the ceiling frame above and swings them like whips, slashing the air. One catches Jamie's shoulder, ripping through his jacket and sticking into his dead flesh. Hendra swings the other, but James grabs the chain in mid-air and yanks, pulling Hendra off his feet. Jamie pounces on Hendra, punching with brutality - nose, jaw, temple. Blood spatters onto the floor. The fire spreads to the walls and ceiling of the penthouse. Hendra notices his dagger on the ground nearby. He drives it into Jamie's neck - deep enough that it should kill any normal man. Cold blood oozes from Jamie's neck. Jamie pulls the dagger from his own next and drives it straight into Hendra's chest - again and again. Hendra coughs out that Jamie is too late - Mao is already coming. Jamie stands and walks to Haruko. He breaks her free from her bonds. Her lips move slightly - as if trying to form his name, but no sound comes out. Jamie kisses Haruko's forehead. Then he gently grips her chin, steadying her head, and slides the blade of Hendra’s dagger into the base of her skull. Her limbs jolt once, then go still. Jamie then lifts Harukos' lifeless body and takes her out of the penthouse. Behind them, the fire consumes Hendra's body and his altar to Mao.

The sun has risen by the time Jamie climbs a winding mountain trail, Haruko's lifeless body cradled in her arms. Cherry blossoms drift down the from the trees lining the narrow path. At the top of the hill, he arrives at Haruko's family home. Her mother and father stand outside, already awake. Her mother gasps at the sight. Her father steps forward. Jamie kneels and offers Haruko’s body to them. Her mother drops to her knees, sobbing. Her father lowers his head and accepts her without question, holding Haruko's body like she is a child again. Jamie turns to go. Jamie stops beneath the blooming sakura tree where he and Haruko once made love. He looks up at the petals drifting down like snow. He digs into the earth with his bare hands, not stopping until he has dug a hole big enough for a grave. Jamie lowers himself into it. He crosses his arms over his chest and looks up one last time as petals fall across his face. Both crows who have followed Jamie perch in the tree above, one on each side of the tree's trunk, watching over Jamie's body like sentinels.