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Yumiko (Sachiko Kokubu) receives weird letters, stating "I know
you were born to marry me ...", which seem to be almost thretening.
And then, she thinks she is followed, stalked maybe, and one day ssome
meadman even rings her door ready to attack her - but runs off when she
fails to open ...
Now all that would be unsettling enough, but then, at a high school
reunion, she remembers a fellow student, Mikuriya, who only was in her
class for one year and who wrote her a letter similar to those she has
been receiving recently. And at the reunion too, she receives a box,
containing her student ID. Now the madman - Mikuriya she's sure - has
really come too close to home.
With her friend Mika (Yuka Hayashi), a private eye, she tries to find
out more about Mikuriya, but what the two of them find out is more than
unsettling: Mikuriya has killed his own parents using piano wire (some of
the letters did also contain pieces of piano wire), but was never
imprisoned for it because he was underage and mentally unstable. Later he
went to the USA, but quite recently he returned to Japan and rented an
appartment no five minutes from Yumiko's place.
The two girls decide to check out the appartment, but when they find a
perverse altar dedicated to Yumiko taking up much of the living room and
created of piano wire, blood and whatever else, they flee in terror ...
and right outside the building, Yumiko faints.
What great luck that Osamu (Masashi Tamiguchi), the fiancé of Yumiko's
friend Moe (Mizuho Nakamura) happens to pass by, and he takes the two
girls to his place, where Yumiko can come back to strength ... bad thing
is though that Osamu is really Mikuriya, and before long he has killed
Mika - yup, with piano wire - and has threatened Yumiko ... but then he
lets her escape, just for fun.
Back at her office, Yumiko tries to contact Moe, and finds out she's at
the hospital, and has just found out she is pregnant from Osamu/Mikuriya.
Yumiko urges Moe to come to her place right away, so she can tell her the
truth about her fiancé, but what she doesn't know is that Mikuriya is in
the room with Moe ...
A short time later, Moe knocks on Yumiko's door. It's only when Yumiko
has already opened the door that she realizes her guest is really
Mikuriya, who has skinned Moe's face and made himself a mask out of the
skin to look like her.
Mikuriya brutally beats up Yumiko, then ties her up and puts her in a
sleeping bag and takes her to the beach, where he continues to mistreat
her. They both end up in the sea, where Mikuriya tries to force Yumiko to
marry him. She refuses though, so he tries to drown her and himself both,
which should say something about the extent of his madness at this time.
And in the end, Mikuriya has only succeeded in killing himself ...
Cheaply produced but effective and nasty little thriller that doesn't
go for (or need) big special effects, instead spends much of its time
creating an atmosphere of unease which only eventually finds an outlet in
the character of the psycho himself. The film's deliberate slow pace only
helps setting up the mood, as does the almost sterile anonymity of most of
the sets. Really nice.
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