Things I don't get ***SPOILERS***

The mother of the girls was neglectful which is another way of being abusive. The mother left the children alone in the home. I explained the second as abuse that happened off camera. The notion that abuse isn't always obvious was implied.

I thought there was no end because there would always be abusive parents. She was the creation of children's imaginations to explain adult cruelty. I should watch this again, reading what you've written seems like I missed a lot. Caught it in theater during its American screen debut.

Thanks for pointing out that the character might have died if/when the legend died. Did he in that case feel like he was responsible for the pain she was inflicting? Like he was the monster.

About the ending, my immediate thought was that the teachers messed up by not cutting off the *real* Slit Mouthed Woman's head. They stopped her in the body she currently possessed, but they needed to sever the head of the original woman's corpse to stop her for good.

My jaded assumption was that the filmmakers were saving this part for the sequel. However, the making-of DVD extra suggested the director didn't put that much thought into things. I think Eriko Sato mentioned that they rushed through all the filming in just 10 days.

All the people whose bodies Slit-Mouthed Woman (SMW) possessed had walked through that particular park at some point or through her house. The version of SMW who kidnapped the boy at the beginning would have been someone who had just been in the park, I guess. The only other transformation that wasn't shown was the possession of whoever kidnapped Mika.

It looked pretty obvious at the end that Matsuzaki was dead, he looked pretty immobilised and with the house caving in above him he couldn't have got out anyway.

I think the ghost can't be stopped because it had to be SMW's own body that was to be killed, every other body that Matsuzaki and Yamashita killed was just a vessel for the ghost.

When the Slit Mouthed Woman takes over bodies, does she have a pattern? At first I just thought that she was taking over bodies of mothers who were abusive, but then I thought about it a bit more. The mother of the two girls that the teachers kill at Masatoshi's house and Natsuki's mom both showed no signs of being abusive to their children. Did I miss a sign or is there a different explanation?

There are two types - the abusive or neglectful mother (Mika's mother and Masatoshi's mother) and the sick mother (the mother of two girls and Natsuki's mother had a coughing cold). We don't know about the boy's mother, who could be either.

The Slit Mouthed Woman says "Aim for my neck"

She didn't. It was a subtitle mistranslation.

Also, when Matsuzaki takes off the Slit Mouthed Woman's head, does he die in the basement? I think that's what happened, but it was never fully specified. That also really sucks! I liked his character a lot!

He died.

Is this ending like Ju on where the ghost can't be stopped or did Matsuzaki just not do it right?

She's kuchisake-onna! The legend of kuchisake-onna was created during the Nara period and the stories persisted through time to now. No, she cannot be stopped and that's part of the fun. I heard stories about her when I was little and my grandmother remembered hearing them when she was little, and she said her parents remembered hearing them when they were children. It's a tradition like English people hear stories about the Headless Horseman (Sleeping Hollow) or Bloody Mary. This film acknowledges that (remember Mika's father telling her he heard the stories too when he was a child?).

Not to sound daft, but did anyone understand why she asked children if she was pretty? I don't really understand how that line ties into the urban legend at all...I mean, her mental instability didn't have anything to do with an obsession with her attractiveness.

When I read the description on Netflix it sounded like she was a woman obsessed with plastic surgery or something. Or was jealous of children's youthfulness. Instead she's just a beyatch

Unless she's so mentally gone that she says things that don't make sense? I don't know, regardless I was pretty disappointed by this movie.