Onibaba

Onibaba (1964) is a relentless descent into rural feudal Japan's moral quicksand, where a bereaved mother and her pregnant daughter-in-law, bereft of masculine authority, turn to the swamp to sell the spoils of samurai murderers. Their bond frays as her daughter-in-law's affair with a survivor, Hachi, stirs primal jealousies and supernatural fears. The mother's attempts to disrupt their liaison with a ghostly mask only deepen the film's nightmarish atmosphere, where survival is a pact with the devil and sanity is a luxury.