Return of the Evil Wig

It's that old story again--boy dresses as girl, boy kills girls. It's widely seen as a transphobic cliche in Hollywood but in other countries it still has currency. For instance, 2018's Stolen Identity (スマホを落としただけなのに, "I Just Dropped My Smart Phone") from Japan. It's tempting to lament how the quality of Japanese cinema has fallen in the past fifteen years though, as with all other countries, I have to remind myself that great films stand the test of time and that there's a lot of old schlock that's forgotten. Hopefully Stolen Identity will fall into that latter category, unless it's shown on Mystery Science Theater 3000.

On the surface, as the English title suggests, it's a movie about identity theft. A man accidentally leaves his smart phone in a cab and it's picked up by a psychotic hacker/stalker. It's the man's girlfriend, Asami (Keiko Kitagawa), who suffers the most as a mysterious figure we at first see only from behind, crouched over four laptops, infiltrates all of her social media.

The killer is helped by the fact that Asami seems to be incredibly gullible, using easy to guess passwords and even offering her password directly when asked by an obviously phishing e-mail. The culprit turns out to be a young man who kills women and weaves their hair into a wig he likes to wear in private, cackling maniacally.

The movie's quite blatant about using the old diagnosis about trans killers having mother issues. In this case, there's a vague bit of back-handed sympathy as one character turns out to be a red herring because he also has an unhealthy fixation on his mother, leading him to be an effeminate adult. Lest an actual woman be let off the hook, Asami herself is given a creepy past cribbed from Single White Female in the film's astonishingly ridiculous climax.

Some kids at the school where I work recommended the film. I told some of them they're better off watching Psycho, though I suspect it's probably too old and foreign for them. Psycho is an obvious predecessor for Stolen Identity but, of course, it has a bit of Dressed to Kill and Silence of the Lambs, too.

Stolen Identity is available on Netflix in Japan.