This film essentially begins with three teenage girls named "Akina" (Rinka Otani), "Mizuki" (Riko) and "Shion" (Koki) livestreaming a visit to a supposedly haunted building in a rural part of the Hokuriku region of Japan. Once there, both Akina and Mizuki play a trick on Shion by putting an ox mask on her and then pushing her into an elevator in that building. Having not been used in quite some time, the elevator plummets to the bottom floor and Shion is never seen again. And from that point on, neither are the other two girls. The scene then shifts to a teenage boy named "Ren" (Riku Hagiwara) showing a high school girl by the name of "Kanon" (also played by Kiku) a video of the three other girls with the one named Shion bearing a strong resemblance to Kanon. Intrigued by this, both Ren and Kanon decide to travel to that exact same area to check it out. What neither of them count on, however, is the horror that waits for them the closer they get to their destination. Now, rather than reveal any more, I will just say that this was the final film in the "Village of Terror" trilogy with the only connection being the director (Takashii Shimizu). At least, that's the only similarity I could find. Be that as it may, although the acting was sufficient for the most part, I thought that the horror was somewhat diluted due to the rather slow unfolding of events. Likewise, the ending seemed a bit too cliched and could have used some improvement as well. That being said, while I certainly don't consider this to be a bad horror film by any means, it wasn't quite as horrific as it should have been, and I have rated it accordingly. Slightly below average.

Ox-head Village, also known as Ushikubi Village, fails because it doesn't know how to wrap up its story and because of a lack of character development.

The story focuses on Kanon, a high school girl who lives with her father. One day, Ren, her friend, shows to Kanon a video where one of the girls is identical to her, basically her twin sister. This fact makes Kanon decide to look for this girl. Up to this point, we already know that evil spirits are tormenting Kanon.

We are able to notice the lack of character development since the inciting incident. There is no apparent reason for Kanon to decide to search for the girl, other than the fact that they are identical. The girl in the video, Shion, is missing; If you're going to search for a missing girl, the first thing you'd probably try to check is the local authorities, no? Of course not! Kanon and Ren decide to visit the haunted hotel where Shion disappeared because, well, why not?

Going back to this review's reasoning, Kanon wants to find out Shion just to know why they look so similar? That seems to me to be a weak motive. As the story progresses, we realize that there is a main motive behind this frantic search, a stronger motive, but one that the film does not know how to properly explore. The holes in character development leave them all feeling unrealistic and contrived.

All the backstory about the Oxhead is expendable. The film uses this folklore to try to create a "gotcha!" moment that doesn't work. When the story reveals to us the truth about the deaths, nothing makes sense.

All this confusion culminates in the denouement, a meaningless denouement. The characters we have followed so far are literally thrown into the final scenario, to face the beast, so that we have the final confrontation with a nonsensical antagonist that has no apparent motives other than to be evil simply for the sake of it. In a ridiculous ending scene, the story bids farewell with the usual horror movie cliché.

I don't recommend this movie on any possible hypotheses.

I was initially lured into watching the 2022 Japanese horror mystery "Ushikubi Village" (aka "Ox-Head Village") as I liked the movie's cover. Plus the fact that this was a Japanese horror movie that I had not already seen, nor actually heard about, also helped to make me want to sit down and watch it.

Writers Daisuke Hosaka and Takashi Shimizu just utterly failed to provide me with much of any entertainment here. First of all, the movie's pacing was so slow that it would put even a dead person to sleep. The narrative was so monotonous and slow paced that my attention span dwindled and my interest in the movie did the same with each passing minute. And the storyline was just pure rubbish. I literally had no clue about the point of this movie, because it made very little sense, and much less provided me with any sense of entertainment.

The acting performances in "Ushikubi Village" were fair enough, just a shame that the actors and actresses literally had nothing to work with here from writers Daisuke Hosaka and Takashi Shimizu, the latter also functioning as the movie's director.

Visually then you're not in for a particular treat here. There was nothing outstanding to be witnessed as the movie trotted on and on without having anything interesting to tell.

As much as I enjoy Asian horror, and the Japanese cinema definitely have a lot of great horror movies, then "Ushikubi Village" was just a swing and a miss. This is not a movie that I would recommend you waste your time, money or effort on. Some of us suffered through this ordeal so you don't have to.

My rating of director Takashi Shimizu's 2022 movie "Ushikubi Village" lands on a two out of ten stars.