The setting is 14th century Japan where feudal war rages. The film highlights the suffering of the people in Japan at this time and the lengths her people had to go to in order to survive. The wife and mother of a soldier who was forcefully inducted into the army are forced into attacking worn out Samurai. They take their possessions and sell them to a greedy merchant. The mother comes to distrust the daughter in law when she shacks up with a dissenter. She takes to wearing a Samurai's mask in order to break up her daughter in law's relationship. She frightens her daughter in law but finds that after it has rained, she cannot remove the mask. She pleads with the young woman to help her remove the mask. When it is removed the older woman's face is covered in sores and her daughter in law freaks out, thinking she is a demon. She runs away and the mother in law runs after her, crying that she isn't a demon. Both disturbing and entertaining at the same time, Onibaba is a classic slice of J Horror which still retains its powers to scare and menace 50 years after its birth. It is a story of lust, sexual tension and greed which ends in bitterness and revenge through the mechanism of a Samurai's mask. Beautifully shot on an atmospheric landscape, the movie is a poetic horror film with strong psychological themes being played out - and it is from the relationships in the movie that we derive the most tension - the two sexually unfulfilled, lonely women and the man who comes between them. The film is minimalist in the amount of characters in the movie, but it is lush with symbolism and uses black and white stock to its fullest effect. Strictly adult fare, the film is nevertheless, never gratuitous or explicit, and it manages to evoke horror in the viewer purely through our imagination and the vivid hardships of feudal Japan. Featuring a fair amount of nudity for those of you who like the raunch factor, Onibaba is not just a horror masterpiece - it is an all round cinematic masterpiece.