Description

Welcome back to Let's Talk Horror, the special miniseries presented by Let's Talk Media. For Part 3, we're diving into Kaneto Shindō's classic 1964 film, Onibaba.

Set in medieval, war-torn Japan, this unsettling film is an earthly masterpiece and is arguably one of the most physically felt horror movies ever made.

Onibaba centers on two unnamed women surviving off violence, desire, and hunger in an isolated sea of reeds. The older woman, the mother-in-law, fears abandonment when the younger woman begins an affair with Hachi. Driven by this fear, the mother-in-law steals a demon mask and uses it to terrify her daughter-in-law.

Vedant Akhauri is joined by visual artist Sam Sundius, a transdisciplinary artist examining memory and its relationship to the body. Sam's work explores cognitive fidelity and white patriarchal control.

In this episode, we'll explore:

• The film's visceral core themes: hunger, desire, jealousy, and lust.
• How the claustrophobic setting of the isolated sea of reeds heightens psychological distress.
• he patriarchal economy that forces the abandoned women to kill samurai and trade goods for meager rations.
• The mask's connection to the Hannya mask archetype of the Noh theater, representing the jealous woman.
• The explicit body horror of the mask fusing to the mother-in-law's face.
• The reveal of the disfiguration, which looks like radiation burns, linking the film to the cultural devastation caused by the atomic bombs.
• How Onibaba resists easy moral interpretations, finding horror within oppressive societal norms.
• Analyzing the film’s shocking, ambiguous, and nihilistic ending.

Check out Sam's work at samsundius.com. If you enjoyed this podcast, please subscribe and leave a rating! For updates and extras, follow us on Instagram at @letstalkmediava